F3 Wrong Vault
by MarcUK
Summary: What if you get sucked into a game, the reality will not accept you as the game's main character? Where will you end up? And what can you do, as a result? N.B. This is my first fan-fiction attempt.
1. The Wrong Vault

**Fallout 3 – Wrong Vault**

**Chapter 1: Wrong Vault**

There was a rumble of thunder, as I dashed through the rain, and after a brief fumbling of his keys, let myself into the house. "What a miserable night", I thought, as I shook off the rain from my coat. "Another night, alone with the computer, O'Well".

I wandered into the kitchen, and got the microwave heating up another Supermarket dinner, while I booted up my computer, ready for another game of Fallout 3, which I loved due to the flexibility of play available, and that you could customise your character. I preferred slim, good-looking female characters, which was in contrast to my own over-weight, unfit male self.

After tea, and washing the few pots, I decided to start off a fresh game, ignoring the thunderstorm outside. I spent some time shaping her appearance, and her Special Tags, birthday party, and the GOAT Exam, with emphasis on Small Guns, Science and Repair. The screen was just doing its fade-out before starting the game proper, when there was huge FLASH and BANG behind me (from I presume was a lightning strike), which hurled me forward into... And THROUGH the screen.

For the next few moments, I seemed to be falling into flashing/smoke-laden hell-hole, with some strange force that seemed to both dragging at me, as well as pushing hard from behind. Then I saw what appeared to be a wall with window rushing towards me, or is me rushing towards it.

With a SLAM, I hit the window, was pinned to it like some rubber Garfield on a car window, pinned there by whatever the force that had pushed me here, and was now seemed intent on crushing me against the glass. The only thing, I could do, was stare through the filthy window, at a strangely familiar scene.

It appeared to be Vault-Tec bedroom, from out of the game, but I had never seen it from this angle. There was a young man lying in the bed, when a young girl dashed in, wearing a blue Vault suit, woke him, talked briefly, and after handing him some things, turned and ran out. As she turned, I saw her face, and recognised that it was Amata.

The lad after a brief pause, leapt out of bed, grabbed various bits and pieces, and ran out, all without seeing me, staring in at him; I suppose no-one looks out of these underground windows any more..

The force crushing down on me, now seem determined to use me as some kind of wash-rag rubbing me first one way and then another across the window, obvious trying to push me inside...

But only thing, I could think about was "if that's Vault 101! then the young lad must be/going to be the Lone Wanderer!, how is that possible?"

CRACKKKK! Something in the wall of reality that I pressed against seemed to fracture, and suddenly I slid sideways away from the window, and into...O'%$and$!

I dropped from the ceiling, and landed painfully hard onto a filthy mattress. I groggily raised myself up, noting that something seemed odd about my hands and arms, but with the rest of aches and pains, it didn't seem important.

"Where was I?" I gazed around dimly lit room, which was filthy, and looked like a rampaging horde had come through at some stage. There seemed to be a blue haze, but as I stood up, the room door was flung open, and a wild-eyed individual burst in, waving a knife, screaming "I can see you! DIE!"

A red mist seemed to fall over me, as a sudden wave of madness, roared out from the back of my brain; I blindly grabbed something and charged forward.

When finally my sanity returned, and I could think clearly once more; I found myself standing in the middle of the room, with broken base-ball bat in my hand, with my opponent's body lying between my feet.

"What the hell happened?/" I stammered out, not noticing that it was not my normal voice. Looking down, I saw at least part of the answer, for on the back of the man's blue overalls, was a number...

106!

"O' boy!, I'm in the wrong Vault"


	2. Create a Safe Location

**Chapter 2: Create a Safe Location**

For some long moments, I just stood there, feeling sick and confused; I had just killed someone, OK, it was self-defence, as he was trying to kill, and that gas this vault was pumped full of was probably the cause of that red madness that had filled me during that fight, but it was simply wrong, and worryingly I could feel that madness lurking at the back of mind, ready to overwhelm me again.

I was also confused, I had read stories on the internet, of people being sucked into computer games, but they had always arrived as the main character, or as themselves unchanged, appearing at the location their character had been in the game. If that was true, then I should be in Vault 101, not Vault 106, and from the various aches and pains, and other strange sensations, this was definitely not my body.

OK, first things first 'Whom am I?' Looking around the room, it had clearly been some-ones living quarters, with lounge area, bedroom, and bathroom facilities, which seemed in working order, despite the chaos.

I moved over to the sink, and ran some water into the basin. Initially, the water murky, and full of crud, but after a few minutes, it ran clear, so I risked a mouthful. Apart from a slight metallic taste, it seemed fine, so I drank several glassfuls, (once I had washed the glass out), and felt a lot better.

A look in the mirror didn't reveal much at first, as I could barely see any reflection in the filthy glass, so I starting cleaning it, using some cloths and mops, along with some Abraxo Cleaner that were lying in the corner of the room, and then I cleaned the sink..., and the toilet..., and the shower, and ...WHOA!

I suddenly stopped, as I realised, I was about move out of the bathroom in my cleaning frenzy; "What am I doing?" I gasped out loud, as I turned and stared at the gleaming bathroom, which probably hadn't looked this good since before the war. I had never been much cleaning fanatic, but this was extreme.

As I moved slowly across the spotless floor, I deliberately avoid looking at myself at the mirror, until I was right up to it, at which point, I stared right and gave a gasp, as I looked at a familiar face. No, not my normal face, but that of the female character, I had been created; OK it wasn't 100% identical, the face in the mirror was filthy, and had a stunned expression on it, and the long red hair clearly needed a good wash, but was definitely her.

The one other disconcerting fact was her eyes or I suppose more accurately now my eyes; Yes! They were the beautiful green eyes that I had chosen, but there was a kind of maniacal gleam in them, warning of some kind of insanity.

All, in all, she, or rather I looked just like what you expect a crazed resident of Vault 106 to look like, and by twisting my back towards the mirror, I confirmed that, by the fact that my Vault Suit had the required 106 on the back.

But that didn't explain, the cleaning frenzy, unless... as I slowly returned to my reflection... the one major non-Vault 106 resident thing about me, was my HAIR, it was dirty, which is what you would expect, but it was also neatly styled, not in one the rough styles, but in the style that was called "Domestic Goddess". Damn, maybe that mean something more than just how the hair is cut, maybe includes a degree of mental attitude, which in my case includes a clean home.

"Right, Okay! Since I am stuck in the loony bin from hell, and outside isn't much better", I muttered "The first thing I need is a safe base to operate from, or where at least I can sleep, without the risk of waking up dead". Looking around living quarters that I was currently in, it looked like this would be a good place to start. There was an upturned bed, and knocked over lockers and shelves, and boxes of stuff that may be useful. There was even an intact computer access port that may still work, although the computer terminal itself was smashed to pieces. Plus the bathroom was now spotless, and it would be a shame to waste that.

Only problem was the dead body in the middle of the room, and the faint-blue miasma, that filled the place. Well, one problem at a time, the body I could do something with.

So, to start with, strip the body of anything useful, which was not as easy as it is implied when playing the game.

The net result was:

1 Dirty Vault Suit (106), they seem to one-size-fits-all cut.

3 pencils and 1 Marker-pen

1 pack of Radaway

1 knife, which was in reasonable condition, which I stuck through my belt to replace my broken baseball bat.

OK, now where to put the body, I crept to door, opened it, and carefully peered into the corridor. All Clear! The corridor entrance to the left was closed, and to the right, the corridor descended some stairs to a lower level. Tip-toeing to the head of the stairs, I stopped, and looked and listened for anything. Apart from some distant shouts, there was nothing, although it did seem that the air at the bottom of the stairs was a darker blue, implying that there was even more gas down there. Maybe the psychoactive gas was slightly heavier than air, if so the higher I am, the safer I'll be.

Across the corridor, from my room, was what had presumably originally been another set of living quarters, though it was very hard to tell, as the damage was even more extreme, than rooms I had arrived in. Perfect for dumping unwanted bodies, so I quickly dragged the body across the corridor, and into the remains of the rooms' bathroom, and left the body lying next to the room's extraction vent, to prevent any future smell of decomposition from disturbing me.

That bit of knowledge disturbed me, how did I know that was the extract vent, also as I thought about it, I realised that I had other info in my brain, like how to strip clean a 10mm pistol, and that a full operational Vault-Tec air purification system would remove any toxic/unwanted gases out of the air, which means that something must be preventing it from clearing the psychoactive gas,... "How on earth do I know that?" I muttered "Right, I need time to think!"

Okay, then if I am going to use these wrecked quarters as my dumping ground, I had best clear good stuff across to the other side of the corridor. That took some time to looking under broken shelves, in boxes, picking up anything that looked still usable, putting them in boxes, and lugging them across the corridor. Most of it was of dubious value, but did hit a couple of jackpots, such as a still operational computer terminal (carried that across very carefully), a beat-up .32 pistol, with about dozen rounds of ammo, which I will checkout later, and a couple of books a "Deans Electrical" and a "Tumblers Today".

Right, all done. Just a parting note, I used the Marker pen to write "Morgue" on the bathroom door, where I dumped the body and 'Vault Dump' on the door which opened onto the corridor.

Once back into my set of rooms, I set about securing the door, which turned out to be very simple, as there was a manual bolt mechanism, for locking the door solidly in place.

"So safe at last – well for the moment" I gave a wry smile at that thought. I was exhausted, and hungry, so after a brief meal out of a tin of 'Pork N Beans', of which all I can say is that they were edible, but I bet the mattress would have probably tasted better; I turned out the lights and crashed out on the mattress, and was dead asleep within seconds.


	3. Vault Invasion

**Chapter 3 – Vault Invasion**

I was jolted from my sleep, by the deafening scream of an alarm, and a repeating announcement "VAULT DEFENCES HAVE BEEN BREACHED! DESTROY THE INVADERS!", as I glanced up I saw that the Fresh Air Vent was pumping more of that blue gas into the room. I had no time to react to that, before the gas descended around me, and the Red Madness seized control once more, pushing what was left of my rational mind firmly into the back seat, unable to do anything, than vaguely watch as events occurred.

I grabbed the .32 pistol and knife, and charged the door, slamming straight into it, as it didn't open, because I had locked it the night before. My insane mind clawed at the door, taking several minutes to open a door, which should have only seconds to do, if I had been in control.

This delay, probably saved my life, for as I fumbled and clawed at the door, I heard several other residents charge past, which meant that when I finally got and ran screaming after them, up several flights of stairs, and into the Atrium, where there was about 20 or so heavily-armed raiders, fighting about 30 or so crazed Vault Residents who had got there before me, and were armed with knives, clubs, etc. I imagine that under most other normal circumstances, it would have been an easy victory for the Raiders, but the gas was so thick, as more was being pumped into the room, that the air was literally purple, and it was affecting the Raiders more than Residents: the Residents seemed for the most part only to be attacking anyone, not wearing a Vault suit, in fact I noticed one resident who had his suit half-torn off by a frenzied Raider, was immediately attacked and beaten to death by three other Residents.

The Raiders on the other hand, didn't seem able tell friend from foe, with one Raider emptying his assault rifle magazine into the back of five of his own gang, before he himself was hacked down by a comrade.

My delayed arrival meant that I was on the outer edge of the fighting mob, when one of the maddened Raiders decided to throw several grenades; Not a good move, when his target was standing right next to him. The resultant chain of explosions blew bodies in all directions. The people in front of me shielded me from the worst of the blast, but it still left me lying senseless in a corner, behind some crates.

When I regained consciousness some hours later, I found myself alone with the dead and dying, the survivors having dispersed to wherever they normally lived. The psychoactive gas had also dispersed to some degree, enough so that I could now think and act rationally.

I was covered in cuts and bruises, so but I decided that it would be a good move to checking for anything usefully first, for I likewise left the area.

My quick search of the bodies was not as fruitful as I would have expected, it was clear that other survivors had also been through the bodies to some degree. I did find a few .32 pistols, and a beat-up 10mm hand-gun, and some ammo for them, which replaced what I had expended already. My original .32 gun, I had to simply throw away, because in my gas-induced killing frenzy, after it had jammed, I had used it as club, and it was now beyond any mortal repair.

Something similar must have happened to the rifles, for although several of the Raiders had them, most had been smashed literally to pieces, though I did find a broken hunting rifle, with an intact telescopic scope on it, and two other hunting rifles, that I might be able to use for spares.

I also found a decent Combat Knife, with a sheaf, to replace my knife, which I had lost somewhere, probably in one of the bodies lying around.

As a next move, I thought I would try and see if the Vault Door was open, which was not easy to do as the Vault layout was not the same, as what I had expected from playing the game, plus the disconcerting fact that for some reason, I did not have a Pip-Boy (then again, none of residents of Vault 106 that I had seen had been wearing one either), so I did not have access to its map function. In the end, I ended up having to back-track along the line of the dead bodies (Resident and Raider) from the Atrium to the entrance.

DAMN! Some idiot had closed the door behind themselves, and the Door Control Panel was incomplete. It looked like it had been attacked with a hammer or some such heavy object; there had been an attempt to repair it, but it had been interrupted rather permanently it appeared from the skeletal remains lying amongst the scattered tools and spares. So leaving was not an option, at least not at the moment.

One interesting thing I noticed on my return to the Atrium, was that in a few corners, here and there was discarded Raider armour, and nearby bodies of Residents that had been stripped of their Vault suits. Perhaps some of the Raiders tried to escape the massacre, by disguising themselves as residents, this theory seemed to be confirmed by the body of a Raider who half-dressed in a Vault Suit, but had either died of his wounds, or been killed by a resident before he could complete his disguise.

Anyway, I took the discarded Raider Armour, plus a handful of Stimpacks, and two intact first-aid kits that I had collected on route, back down to my quarters.

To say that I was relieved, when I was able to lock that door behind me once more, is definitely a world-class understatement.

To be honest, with all my aches and pains, I would have loved to have crashed out on the mattress, but until I had dealt with that extra gas release from the ventilation, I would not be safe. This time I was lucky, next time I might not.

Lying next to the toppled shelving unit, was a step-ladder, which in reasonable condition, as well as three toolboxes; when I went through none of the toolboxes were complete, but once I had merged all the contents into one box, I had fairly comprehensive set of tools, which made me feel comfortably happy with, probably to due to the fact that I gave my character a fairly high Repair level. I dumped the two empty toolboxes across the corridor.

With the steps under the relevant Fresh Air vent, it took less than two minutes to remove the grill, and stick my head into the air duct. I found myself face to face with a bank of 4 gas cylinders, which were fitted with electric solenoid valves. I quickly nipped down, and got a valve key from the tool-box, which I quickly used to isolate off each of the gas cylinders, before disconnecting and removing them from the ventilation duct.

After examining the gas cylinders, their respective solenoid valves and the valves wiring, I concluded with my best guess, that two of the cylinders which were practically empty, had been the original timed gas release valves, the other two cylinders, which were about 10% and 30% full respectively, had been linked to the Vault's security system, as a means of rallying the residents to the defence of the Vault. I wish I could get my hands on the sick swine that came up with that idea.

I quickly moved all the gas cylinders across the corridor, putting the empty cylinders at the back of the rubbish-dump and the two partly filled cylinders in the bathroom morgue. As an additional precaution, and checked the ventilation those rooms as well. I found an identical arrangement of gas cylinders, which I also isolated and dismantled.

Once, safely secure back in my rooms, I drew the blinds across the window, to prevent any passing lunatic getting the idea of calling in to see me.

After a short meal on some Cram (for protein) and some Dandy Boy Apples (for the vitamins) though after 200 years, I am not sure of either ~ _Note to self, must find more food supplies, as I haven't got much with me_ ~ I decided to try and tidy the rooms and sort out what I have.

I initially started in the bedroom, putting the bed back on its legs, and the mattress onto the bed, which point that "Domestic Goddess" trait kicked in, and as a result, I gave the whole bedroom a comprehensive spring-clean, with walls washed and floor scrubbed. I also did some laundry, washing some blankets and pillows that I found in locker, along with some Vault suits in the bath, and hanging them to dry on improvised washing lines in the living-room. Even the mattress got a good scrub, although I couldn't get the stains out, it did smell a whole lot fresher.

By the end of which, I was exhausted, so I gave myself a good wash in the bathroom, which from the relief my body felt, was probably the first bath it had had in decades, then collapsed into bed ,and fell fast asleep.


	4. Problem with Power

**Chapter 4: Problem with Power**

It seemed strangely unreal waking up in a bed, in a nice clean room. Just for a few short sleepy minutes, I was able to pretend that the past few days had simply some strange dream, then the nightmare reality, jolted me fully awake from the sound of manic screaming, and crash and bangs just outside my locked door.

By the time, I dared to peep through the blinds the fighting had moved, leaving three dead Vault Residents in the corridor, it is fairly clear that when there are no invaders to unite them, the residents spend their days fighting each other. I quickly nipped out get anything useful, and move the bodies into the morgue.

"Well, I had best get-up and going again", I declared to myself; so after a quick breakfast, and wash and brush-up, I starting work on sorting and cleaning my last remaining room to do, the 'Living Room/Lounge area'.

One of my earliest finds was a 'white-board' with some suitable marker-pens, this I quickly put up on the wall, and used it to keep track of what inventory I had, plus a Priority List, of things that needed to be done, such as 'Get more food and ammo'. I soon had the fallen shelving put back and all useful stuff packed in clearly marked crates, and all the lockers put back upright, and filled with the salvaged Vault suits and Raider armour.

With the room now restored to its gleaming pre-war state, which I had to admit was a minor miracle in itself, I decided to take a breather, and have a look at those books, that I had found on my first day, but I had not even had chance to open them. Looking at them closely, that both of them were apart on an ongoing series, which seemed to published semi-annual basis, which would of course why you would improve your skills, with every book found, as you learn something new every time.

Anyway the copy of the "Deans" that I had, contained a section on the "Vault-Tec's Revolutionary Ventilation system", giving a lot technical details about it, and how it could purify the air, of all dangerous/unwanted impurities, which should include the 'psycho-gas', but the detail that caused me leap out of my seat, was a series of photographs from the Vault-Tec's Demonstration Vault in Los Angeles; what was significant and made clear what had been bothering me about the vault since I had arrived, was the location of the air vents.

According to the photos and accompanying text, there should an incoming Fresh-air vent in the middle of the ceiling, and some extraction vents in the ceiling, in the corners of the room (for rising pollutants such as tobacco smoke), and around the room at near floor level to remove any dangerous gases such as Carbon Dioxide, or Methane that can accumulate in caves and underground spaces, as they are heavier than air. What was significant was that the floor level vents in Vault 106 were missing; instead these vents were mounted high up next to the ceiling.

A closer examination of the wall revealed that floor level, revealed that there was bulkhead panel, exact same size, as the extraction vent near the ceiling A quick use of a screwdriver, removed the panel exposing the missing air vent, and it only took about 10 minutes to quickly work around the room to swap the high wall vents with floor level panels, so that they were as they should be. Even within those few minutes, results were apparent, as the ever-present blue tint to the air began to clearly. Ironically, this did not make me feel calmer, but instead, I was filling up with rage, of righteous indignation. Those Vault swine, not only poisoned innocent residents with their psycho-gas, but were also cheap-skates, who had in their attempt economise, had deliberately made every room a deadly gas pocket, to avoid wasting any of gas. I gave vent to my rage with ranting rave at those who did this, but were beyond my reach to make them pay for their crimes against humanity.

To try regain some composure, I now turned my attention to my weapons, which since I was trapped in here would of vital importance, so using the various parts from what weapons, I had salvaged, I was able to equip myself with a fairly respectable initial armoury, which consisted of the following:

- a scoped .32 hunting rifle

- a .32 pistol

- a 10mm pistol (in poor condition, as I had no spares parts for it)

- a good Combat Knife.

I had about sixty rounds of .32, and about ten 10mm rounds, so I would have to conserve them until I had a lot more ammo; I also had about six Stimpacks.

I now turned to my priority list, which had food and ammo at the top, as I had at best only 3 days worth of food, "OK, now for a shopping trip." I declared, but then the lights dipped several times, and then went out for about a minute or so. "Or perhaps not" I concluded.

Clearly power had a much greater priority than food, after all you can live for 3 weeks, without food, but without power life in the Vault, would become a whole much worse hell, with no prospect at all of getting the door open to escape.

But to do that I need to know where to go, so I connected the working computer terminal, that I had found earlier, to the room's access port and logged in.

I was unable to get much data, because I didn't have a Pip-Boy, so the Vault Computer System refused to even allow me to attempt in as anything other than "Guest", but I was able to get a basic 'You are Here' indication, which told me that I was in the "Accommodation" Level, of the 'Maintenance' sector, and it provided directions the Primary Reactor room, which was directly accessible from my area, just 3 floors below me.

So after making some preparations, such as getting all my weapons, and my tool-box and a couple of bottles of water, I exited my quarters, and locked the door behind me, as I didn't want anyone else going in and messing up my nice clean floors.

I did pause briefly to put the vents right in the rooms opposite, granted those few vents would not have a huge impact on all the psycho-gas in the Vault, but I figured the removal of at least some gas would help.

I slowly crept down the first set of stairs to the floor below, the gas level down here was much higher, and I certainly started to feel very twitchy, jumping at every suspicious shadow or rattle. This level seemed to mainly comprised of store-rooms, but I was unable to confirm it as most of the doors were inaccessible, either due to the lack of available power, or damage or negligent over the past 200 years; but one significant discovery was a Medi-Centre, which had been intended to provide initial first-aid and medical care to injured personnel before they were transferred to the main Vault Medical Room.

As could be expected, the Medi-Centre was a mess, but I was able to find four Stim-packs in a battered first-aid kit, but of greater interest was working computer terminal next to a wall safe; a quick examination of the computer confirmed that it did control the safe locking mechanism, so I set about hacking it. It was surprisingly easy, as getting the password was identical to how it is done in the game.

Once logged in, I was able to unlock the safe, and access the last few diary entries belonging to a junior doctor, a Dr Paul Jones whose work-station this had been:

The majority of the initial entries were fairly routine, dating from prior to the initial gas release, and were usually complaints about how the majority of the scientists were 'out of touch with reality', and 'were stuck in their Ivory Towers', the last few entries reported the strange appearance of the air, and of increasing occurrences of unaccountable violence.

The final entry reported that he (Dr Jones) was trapped, having barricaded himself in this room, and was using the oxygen bottles as he had realised that the psycho-gas release had been deliberate. He reported that the Overseer was ranting at his staff demanding that food supplies be brought to his office immediately. Dr Jones last entry noted that "Only an ivory-tower idiot would be fool enough, to lock himself in an air-tight building, and then release toxic gas, resulting in hordes of lunatics, who had control over all the food, and weapons storage locations".

The safe did yield one treasure beyond price: A "Pip-Boy", it was completely unused, still in its original packing. It had note from Dr Jones, who sourly noted that it had been reserved by the Overseer, for the Overseer's kid, whenever he or she would be born. As it was very unlikely that its original intended recipient would need it now, I decided that I had a greater need for it.

It was a Pip-Boy 3000-B, so it looked a little different from Pip-Boy 3000-A, which was given to '101', whether he had got to now. It was a lot more stream-lined, and less clunky-looking, and had an additional gauge to the standard Radiation Geiger Counter, although I couldn't tell what, I decided to read the manual properly later, which was definitely a bad move.

I decided to strap it on, following the instructions in the manual; It closed with a faint hiss around my wrist, then the next thing I knew, my arm felt like it had been invaded by a swarm of writhing worms, as the various biometric probes deployed, and rove their way up my arm, and onwards to various parts of my body and brain.

If this was had been the 'Lone Wanderer's 10th birthday present, it must have been the 'Gift from Hell'; it took me at least a good hour before I could drag my pain-racked body up off the floor, and that only after I had managed to give myself a couple of shots of Med-X. For a 10-year old kid, this must have been a nightmare birthday party; the Overseer of 101 must have been a real sadist to do that to a kid.

I had a quick play with the controls, but the help menu informed me that most of the functions, such as the VATS, were off-line, until the Pip-Boy probes had time to establish themselves in their correct locations, and then for it to calibrate itself to my body. Its map only showed the immediate room that I was in, and no more. Clearly some data downloads are needed.

I now moved on towards the Main Reactor, descending the stairs to the next level down. Repeated checks of the Pip-Boy confirmed that its map was auto updating to include each new area/room, as I entered them; this level seemed to be primarily Maintenance workshops. The gas was even thicker down here, and I found it ever more difficult not to lash out at everything and anything that was in my way.

A sudden yellow blip appeared on my Pip-Boy, indicating that some-one or something was down here, a check of the manual showed that: Green blip = Friendly or Neutral, Red blip = Hostile and Yellow = Unknown. However this question quickly resolved itself, as Insane Resident charged out of one of the workshops, waving a large wrench over his head. A sensible response would have been for me to have simply dropped him with a quick bullet to head, but again due to high concentration of gas, the madness seized control, and I charge forward to meet him, waving my combat knife.

He must have been even more hyped up on the gas, than I was, as he kept doing extremely wild swings with wrench, so as long as I kept ducking, I was alright, of course if he did hit me, it would probably take my head right off. Fortunately, his wild swings meant that he started to tire fairly quickly, so when he did one swing too many; I was able to dart in with one quick stab through the heart, thus ending the fight.

I quick search of his body, didn't yield much, but I took his 106 Utility suit, which could come in useful, especially with its supposed repair skill boost, though in reality that is probably due to all the useful pockets and tool-loops, which make life easier for working in.

Again most of the doors on this level were jammed, and the one workshop that could be entered was so smashed up, that it could have been mistaken for a junkyard. So downwards to the final level, looking down the stairs, the gas was even thicker, so much so, that I could hardly see the foot of the stairs, and the effects of the gas meant that it was getting even harder to think straight; when I was about halfway down, there was an almighty screech of an alarm, that was such a shock that I literally jumped back up the stairs a few steps, the next surprise, was when I realised that the sound was inside my head, and that there was a light flashing light on my Pip-Boy, a closer look revealed it was coming from that second gauge, that was below the Geiger Counter, on the Pip-Boy, when I called up the manual on it, I discovered that it indicated oxygen (O2) level, and that the alarm was warning that I had been entering an atmospheric Death-Zone. And as I stared down, from my position on the stairs, I could now see the foot of the stairs, and the pile of bodies there: some had clearly been there many, many years, but others were clearly very recent. Just another step or two down, and I would have joined them, the concentration of the psycho-gas was so high that not only had it displaced all the available oxygen down there, but was now lethal levels.

I had had a lucky escape, but it also meant that I could not reach the Main Reactor room, without some kind of breathing apparatus, and Dr Jones had used up all the supplies in the only Medi-Centre I had found so far. Worryingly, from the way the lights kept dipping, I did not have a whole lot of time to go hunting for more supplies.

The option of fixing the ventilation on this level, with the hope that reduction in gas level here, would somehow reduce the gas in the lower level, was not really available, as (a) This was unlikely to work, (b) It would most likely increase the power demand from the air filtration system, thus making the whole power crisis worse, and finally (c) would take far too long.

All I could do was hurry back to my rooms, and see if I could get any more information from the computer. "It is only crisis after another", I fumed as I hurried back up the stairs.


	5. Gainful Employment

**Chapter 5 – Gainful Employment**

As I re-entered my rooms, by an astonishing feeling of freshness about the place, so much so that stood for a few moments, trying to work out what was different, in the end I concluded that it must be that for the first time since my arrival here, I was breathing an atmosphere that was uncontaminated with that psycho-gas. The difference was truly startling.

Another dip of the lights, quickly reminded me why I was back here so soon. But this time, when I accessed the computer, I was greeted with a surprise, for instead of the basic terminal screen, I was presented with a fancy spinning 'Vault-Tec' logo, and the message "Please wait, System processing data", I was initially stumped, until I glanced at my new Pip-Boy, where I was presented with almost the same screen, only this time the message was "System Busy - Transferring Data".

Clearly I was locked out of both, until whatever was going on was completed, and I had a strange feeling that taking the Pip-Boy too far away from the Computer would not be a good idea.

So to pass the time, I had quick meal of something, which I presume was food, the outside of the tin was so illegible, that it could have easily been "Kitty Din-Dins", it certainly smelt and looked like it could be. I really need to find some more food supplies. I also read the "Tumblers Today" volume that I had found earlier, and in between reads, I would glance occasionally at both screens (Computer and Pip-Boy), to see if there had been any progress, what information that briefly flashed onto screen long enough for me to read was intriguing to say the least, such as: 'Skill Assessment', 'Evaluating GOAT data' and 'Vault Staff Requirements'.

For the whole 30 minutes, that I waited, I have to admit, I was burning up with curiosity, about what it all meant, and was starting to consider applying "Mechanical Persuasion", with a large hammer, so as to get some answers.

But, just when I was about to reach for the hammer, the computer screen cleared, and I was presented with the message:

* * *

_To Vault Resident – Jenny Saunders,_

_Congratulations, on your new assignment of "Chief Maintenance Engineer" to Vault 106. You now have the honour to serve Vault-Tec, and your fellow residents to an ever greater degree, and for the benefit of humanity._

_You are to resume your duties immediately, and tasks that require your immediate attention as of this moment, have been loaded into your Pip-Boy._

_Signed,_

_Overseer Dr A. Leris_

* * *

As I seriously doubted that Dr Leris was still alive after 200 years, I could only conclude that this was a stock-standard letter issued by the Vault's Main-frame computer, on his behalf.

When I tried to extract any further information from the computer, I was met with almost zero success, as it insisted that all the information that I needed for my new job were now on my Pip-Boy, and all the other records on the system were either classified beyond my level, had been corrupted, or had been otherwise lost/unavailable.

The only file I managed to open was obviously one that had been available officially to all Vault-Tec employees, as it listed when the Vault was made, who the Overseer is, etc. In fact, it looked similar to the Vault-Tec file that the Brotherhood of Steel have at the Citadel (or they did in the game version of this world).

The file did have three pieces of useful information:

- Original occupants were: 95 subject and 12 researchers, so that gives me any idea of Vault size.

- Vault Design Duration: 147 months = 12 years, 3 months, so we are way beyond the design life of the vault

And critically that:

- Primary Power Supply: Roc-Solid Brand Geothermal and Secondary Power Supply: General Atomics Nuclear Power.

Since I couldn't get to the Primary Reactor, there was an alternative, which I could try to reach.

"Okay, what has Pippy got for me?" I muttered, as I initiated my Pip-Boy interface. Well it was quickly apparent that the Pip-Boy's calibration was progressing, although the VATS interface was still unavailable, there was now the Health screen, showing my well being, such as any injuries and their rate of healing, and radiation exposure (very low), and a list of my skills, which were consistent with I had entered when I had created my character, though Lock-picking and Melee skills had gone, probably thanks to all the hand-to-hand fighting experience I have had since I got here; The high Repair skill shown, probably accounted for my new job.

It also included to my surprise a Perk tab, which said that I was a 'Gun Nut' and 'Black Widow'. "Great, just what I need! A beauty in a Vault of crazies!" I sighed.

The Pip-Boy map had been updated, showing the whole vault, although only the rooms I had visited with the Pip-Boy were shown in up-to-date status, the status of the rest of the Vault had not been updated, well at best in decades, and for some areas (for the most part the lowest levels) their status hadn't been updated in almost 200 years. Fortunately the Secondary Reactor room was shown as being on the same level as the Atrium, so it will be relatively clear of the worst of the gas.

I had a quick look in the Quests list, but only contained the previously mentioned Jobs-to-Do list, which glancing at it, contained every reported fault in the last 200 years. Ironically the job with the highest "MUST DO NOW" priority was oiling a squeaky wheel on the Overseer's chair, which had been logged approximately 2 days before the initial gas leak "Well, he will just have to live a bit longer with" I declared with some bitterness. The most recent item was that some gas bottles for a special project needed replacing as they were indicating that they were now empty.

The rooms where the empty bottles were reported corresponded with my living quarters.

"I wonder just how long some poor soul in Maintenance went round replacing these damnable things, not realising they were killing everyone" I murmured, as I prepared once more to set out once more.


	6. You've Got Company

**Chapter 6 – You've Got Company**

As I left my rooms, I locked my door again behind me, this proved much easier to do this time, as the Vault's Main-frame computer, had officially allocated them as my official quarters.

Also since I had confirmed that all the rooms accessible from this corridor on this level and below are unoccupied, I used my official 'Maintenance' status to place an easy lock, on the corridor access door, so that nobody could sneak into those areas while I was away.

As I headed for the Atrium, I passed some additional sets of living quarters, which had probably been intended for Vault Maintenance staff and their families, but apart from a brief check to make sure they were unoccupied, I did not waste any time searching them, as I could do that later. Although as I exited one room I spotted a Vault-Tec Safety Hard-hat that was still hanging a peg behind the door; I quickly grabbed it, as I figured that anything that improved my protection had to be a bonus.

It was fortunate that I did, for as I entered the Atrium, I was greeted with a cry of "GOT YOU!" followed immediately by a massive blow from above, onto my head, which knocked me to the floor, as a Crazy dropped down from the overhead walkway onto me, while at the same time trying to remove my head with a baseball bat.

As we roll apart from the shock of the collision, both of us were a bit stunned from the impact, but thanks to my hard-hat, I was still conscious, so while the Crazy stared at his broken baseball bat, as if not sure what to do next. I solved his dilemma, by planting a .32 bullet right between his eyes, a brilliant shot on my part, but to honest,, it was just a lucky shot, as from the way my head felt, I would have been just as happy if I had managed to send the bullet anywhere near his direction.

I had to use the last of my Med-X, to ease my headache down to a level, where I felt like doing anything like moving or much else. Once my double-vision had faded, I carefully examined the Pip-Boy's proximity indicator, which showed 2 or 3 hostiles, and approximately half a dozen unknowns in detection range, but none of them seemed to be moving or reacting to sound of the fight; Either they are too far away to hear my gunshot, or fighting is such a common occurrence that no-one reacts to it anymore.

I retrieved my hard-hat, and placed it firmly back on my head, then went over and searched my opponent's body.

My opponent was quite different, from any of the other people I had previously met. For starters, instead of the usual 106 Vault-Tec jump-suits that the Residents wore, he was wearing a badly torn Scientist lab-coat, which was a couple of sizes too small for him, plus he had a fairly decent Merc-Cruiser outfit underneath it, and looking at him, he had none of the characteristic tattoos or haircuts, that marked someone as being a Raider. Yet he was also clearly not a born and bred Resident, as he had signs of a fading sun-tan, and I seriously doubt there are any tanning booths or the like in the Vault. So why was he here? What made him come into the Vault? Unfortunately he was no longer available for interrogation.

Apart from his clothing, the only other useful items that he had was: a 10mm pistol which was in very poor condition, which was probably why he attacked using the base-ball bat, which was now only good for firewood; He also had about a dozen rounds of 10mm ammo, and thirty caps.

As I looked around the floor of the Atrium, I was struck by the fact that there seemed to be far less bodies lying about, than there had been last time I was up here, and those bodies that remained, many were no longer complete. A movement at the far side of the room provided me with the answer, for when I moved closer, I saw that it was a Radroach dragging away the severed remains of an arm. My initial reactions to the sight, was to dash forward and kill it, but in the end I decided not to, as it was providing a needed service of disposing the various bodies lying all around. So until I could find an alternative solution, I decided to let it carry on.

One thing for sure, I resolved that Radroach meat was definitely off the menu.

As I stood watching the Radroach dragging away the arm, it was suddenly attacked by another Radroach, and then as they scuffled and rolled across the floor, another Radroach joined the fray, and then a fourth.

It all seemed strangely very funny, and I started to giggle, quietly at first but then more and more louder and maniac. Suddenly, I swung round and punched a nearby crate HARD! ... AAARRRGGHHH!... That really hurt, but the pain was good too, for it helped clear my head.

"Damn! The sooner I do something about this gas the better!" I declared out loud. For it was getting fairly clear that the longer someone was exposed continuously to the gas, the more and more normal, it feels to be slightly ... well ... mentally unstable. If I wasn't careful, it wouldn't be long before I would be as crazy as any other 106 Resident.

As I turned back towards the increasing all-out Radroach brawl, I could not help wondering, if humans were the only ones affected by the gas, as the Radroaches behaviour didn't seem to be anything like what it was in the game, where they seemed fairly tolerate of each other. Here they seemed to very territorial, and even aggressive towards each other; Had 200 years exposure to the gas, affected them as well? That seemed even more worrying; clearly anything that could affect something as tough as a Radroach needed to be got rid of as soon as possible.

Still I had to keep moving, so I headed off down the passageway, leading to the Secondary Reactor, and within a few minutes finally reached the door, with the glowing sign 'Reactor' above.

However, when I tried to open the door, it refused to open more than a few inches. "I don't and$£and$£! BELIEVE IT" I shouted, and then shoulder-charged it a couple of times. It moved open another couple of inches, but my shoulder was now too sore to repeat my assault on the door. However it did look like it might just be enough, and after stripping down to my underwear, I was managed with a great deal of struggling to squeeze through the gap.

It was the remains of some kind of ancient barricade that was blocking the doorway, but now I that I was through, it took only a few minutes to dismantle, and then for me to retrieve my clothing and other equipment from outside.

Once I was dressed again, I turned my attention to the Reactor room itself. In many ways it looked in fairly good state. The Nuclear Reactor was in the centre of the room, and apart from worrying squeals every so often looked to be fully operational; there were three auxiliary generators positioned around the room, against the walls: one at each end of the reactor and the third on the far side of the Reactor from me.

One of the auxiliary generators was running, but regarding the other two: one had shutdown, and had two or three red and amber lights flashing on its control panel, and the third generator had more blown up, rather than shutdown, with a massive hole in the middle of it, and several impressive electrical arcs jumping from one end to the other.

On closer inspection, the Reactor proved to be in excellent shape considering, it hadn't been properly maintained for several or more decades; its good condition was probably due to the Mr Handy robot, that I literally fell over, as I went round the Reactor heading for its control panel.

According to the maintenance records, which had been downloaded onto my Pip-Boy, it had been assigned to care for the Reactor Room, and had been designated with the name 'Up-N-Atom' by the maintenance staff. When I gave an examination of it, it proved to be fully intact, with the exception that its power-pack was completely drained flat. A follow-up inspection of its recharging station, showed that the station had been disabled by a damaged cable, which had been hit by shrapnel from the blown generator, it only took a couple of minutes to fix, and then a few more for me to drag/roll the robot onto its recharge station. I left it there to charge its batteries, while I went to check the Reactor's controls, which were now accessible, now I had removed the robot from in front of them.

The Reactor was designed to easily supply all the power demands of Vault 106, without needing to draw on the three auxiliary generators, which were there for any emergencies that may arise. However, after 200 years, the Reactor was only producing about 20% of its designed output, and with the Primary Power supply off-line, and two of the three emergency auxiliary generators also off-line, it was barely meeting the current Vault demand, and the situation was made worse by the violent fluctuations in the load, which occurred every time, there was a crack of an electric arc across the wrecked generator behind me. Once I had isolated the blown generator, and made it safe to be near, the strain on the Reactor was considerably eased, but it was still only barely meeting the power demand.

In fact, one of the main reasons most of the doors in the vault were inoperable is due to that fact that there is insufficient power for their control circuits to operate properly, and Vault-Tec in their 'infinite wisdom' had failed to provide a means of manually opening them.

With the Reactor load now stable, I was now able to investigate the loss in the Reactor's Total Power Capacity, and found a very simple answer: - the Vault had only been designed to last about 12 years, and it was now nearly 190 years beyond that limit.

The Reactor was simply nearly out of fuel, and was 'running on fumes'. A check on my Pip-Boy revealed that the Vault did have facilities manufacture new fuel rods in an emergency; thankfully 'Up-N-Atom' is still operational, (or would be once it had recharged) otherwise that option would have been unavailable. Once it is recharged, 'Up-N-Atom' could pre-process some of the existing spent nuclear fuel rods, which should boost things a little, but really the Reactor needed a fresh supply of plutonium. And I'm not sure where I can get some, unless I raid that old bomb in Megaton, it should contain enough to fuel this place for another 200 years, assuming that the "Church of Atom" doesn't lynch me first. The thought of Confessor Cromwell's reaction to my idea made me break out in a quiet fit of the giggles.

I quickly oiled and greased, and did what service work I could do without shutting the Reactor down, and drew up a list of tasks for 'Up-N-Atom' to do, once I was clear of the area, as some of the service tasks meant lowering the Reactor's radiation shields, which would lethal to anyone still in the room at the time. The Reactor did sound much smoother afterwards, and the squealing had stopped.

I gave a quick glance at the robot's diagnostic screen, as I moved passed, to confirmed that it was successfully recharging (it was all ready at 5%), and saw that its on-board computer was now exchanging data with the Vault's Main-Frame – system updates, etc.

The auxiliary generator that was running, proved to be in 'A-1' condition, and didn't need anything beyond a quick routine maintenance. The other generator, which had shutdown, turned out to have suffered a coolant leak, and had shutdown when it started to overheat; the leak did not take long to fix, and there was fresh coolant in an oil-drum in the corner with which to re-fill the system. With that generator repaired, and running once more, the Vault's power situation had improved to a level such that the lights were no longer flickering, though I would need to be very economically with what I powered up. The third generator was only fit for scrap, or use as spares.

It was then, as I straighten up, that I heard a pleading voice behind me "Please, please will you help me?" my response must have looked like it was straight out of cartoon; all I know is that one second, I was standing one side of the generator, the next I was on the far side, pointing my gun back in the direction of the voice.

In the corner of the room, there had been a closed door leading into a small store-room; the door was now open, and standing in the doorway, was a woman in her mid-forties, wearing surgeon's coat, and there was something round her neck. She was looking pleadingly in my direction, although her right hand seemed ready to slam the door shut, if I attacked.

My response to my first contact with first sane person since I arrived here was far from the standard of 'Livingston and Stanley'. "Who the hell are you?" I demanded; my surprise and shock clearly recognisable in my voice.

"Sarah-Jane... Please, can you remove this Slave Collar" she replied, with a gulp. My only mental response was "NOW! what do I DO?"


	7. Who are You?

**Chapter 7 – Who are you?**

"OK, move out into the open, with your hands in the air", I ordered, as I slowly moved out from behind the generator; having realised that hiding behind something that explodes when damaged was probably not a good idea.

"I can't! Please, Help me!" she replied tearfully.

"What do you mean?", as I moved warily towards her. She didn't look armed, but I was reluctant to take too many chances.

"Can't you see?" She responded in a slight aggravated tone of voice "I've got a Slave Collar around my neck, and every time I try to move out of this room, it starts to vibrate, and only stops if I go back in"

"And, if you don't go back in?" I encouraged.

"The vibration is a warning, if I keep moving away from my Slaver Master, then it blows my head off" She exclaimed, with an expression on her face, which suggested that she was thinking that I must be very dim not to know this.

"Look," I explained, "I have never been outside of this Vault, so have very limited accurate knowledge of what's it like outside".

"O Sorry" she replied, now looking slightly sheepish, "I should have realised. I assumed that everyone would have known. This is a Slaver's Capture Collar; it is what the Slavers put on newly captured slaves, or troublesome ones that are likely to try to escape. The scumbag that caught me explained, it is linked to a radio transmitter which one of them carries, and if I move too far away from it, the collar starts to vibrate, and unless I move back closer straight away, it will kill me"

"So, how did you end up in here? I can't see anybody here that would have the transmitter preventing your head from blowing" I responded still slightly suspicious of her.

"The Slavers I was with, met up a bunch of Raiders a few days ago; they were planning to raid a Vault, this Vault" Sarah-Jane responded gesturing around her "and they did a deal: in exchange for helping in the attack, the Slavers would get to have any of occupants of this Vault that are captured, while the Raiders got everything else of value. Well, we got in easy enough, as promised, but main central hall, I think you call it the Atrium" I nodded, confirming that detail, "We're attacked from all sides, by people in those blue Vault suits, like you are wearing. It was terrifying, they kept coming, even when they had been shot full of holes. And the Air, the air it went weird, all I could feel was fear, mind-shattering fear. I fled along with a couple of Slavers down a passageway, but the air was even thicker. It was Blue!" She stared at me with terror-stricken, as she described what happened, clearly reliving the whole thing as she spoke.

"Go on." I urged. She gasped, but then haltingly continued "The slavers who were with me started shouting, and shooting at things that weren't there. I clawed at a door to try and escape; that was my only thought: to escape! ... I got the door open, managed to squeeze in somehow... My only thought was to hide, so I closed the door behind me, and ran in here, into this small room, but I was didn't close the door, as I wanted to see what was happening ... The slavers then dashed back the way we had come. There was a big explosion, and the silence apart from a few isolated screams."

I gave slight smile, as I had seen that explosion first-hand, and I imagined the later screams were when the surviving Residents mopped up the wounded, which I missed, as I was unconscious by that point; I guess it was only the fact that I was wearing a Vault suit, and had been hidden behind some crates that saved me, while I was lying there exposed.

My smile then faded, there was something she had said that didn't sound right, but I couldn't put my finger on what it was.

"After awhile the air cleared, and that raw fear started to disappear, but when I tried to leave this room, the collar would vibrate, and I would have to plaster myself against the back wall to make it stop" She continued, "Please can you get it off?"

"Okay, let me have a look at it." I responded, having finally decided to trust her, and besides I couldn't remain alone in here, and live as a hermit forever.

I moved closer, so that I could to examine the collar closely. The first thing that struck me was the smell, she stunk. Though to be fair, that is not too surprising, after all bathing must be a very rare luxury, with clean water being at a premium, and all main bodies of water contaminated with radiation, and often occupied by Mirelurks. It must be the fact that I'm technically a new arrival here in this universe that made it something noticeable to me.

A close look at the collar itself revealed that it was basically a very simple device, with its anti-tamper defences being designed primarily to make it impossible/dangerous to be removed by either its wearer, or by someone else who doesn't have the right tools, or skills. Thanks to my toolbox, it proved to very easy disable it, and render it safe.

I put the dismantled collar in the Spares section of my toolbox, after all you never know when a bit of plastic explosive may come in handy.

After Sarah-Jane profusely thanked me, I gave her what little food that I had with me, and plus a bottle of clean water, as she had not eaten or drunk anything properly for a couple days.

She admitted that she had been drinking some bottles of 'Dirty' water that she had found in the store-room, not realising that these had originally water samples taken from the Reactor, I quickly gave her some Radaway. She had been lucky that the samples were 200 years old, as looking at the radioactivity level of the remaining samples, had they been fresh drawn from the Reactor, she would have died from radiation sickness, or be well on her way to ghoulification. She certainly started to look a lot better as the Radaway took effect

By this stage, I was getting pretty well exhausted; it had been a long day and Sarah-Jane didn't look a whole lot better, so I activated Up-N-Atom, who was now fully recharged, and sent it about its tasks of servicing and tending the Reactor, and its two auxiliary generators. I also instructed it to start reprocessing the spent fuel-rods, once we were clear, with the limiter that it was not to leave the Reactor room.

It is slightly ironic that safety of a robot, such as Up-N-Atom, was much more important than a human life, but then again robots are now a precious resource, while there more people available outside the Vault, at least in theory.

So after locking the Reactor door behind me, we headed down to my living quarters. I kept a very careful eye on Sarah-Jane, in case the psycho-gas affected her. She seemed fine with the gas concentration on the Atrium level. However, as we dropped down to the Maintenance staff quarters level, she did start to get a bit jumpy or at least nervous, but when we entered the corridor outside my rooms, she started to relax again, probably as the gas level was much lower here, thanks to the now correctly mounted vents in the Dump quarters were removing the psycho-gas from the atmosphere.

When I quizzed her, once we're safely secure in my rooms, she admitted that rather than a Red Madness that I had felt, from the increasing gas level, she had felt a rising level of Blind Terror, which made her want to flee and hide in a dark corner somewhere.

"Well" I said, "I suppose that we best find a way to get you out of this Vault as soon as possible, then." "NOOO!" came her astonishing reply, real fear spread across her face "PLEASE, Can I stay HERE?"

"But what about the psycho-gas? And the Insane Residents, who attack anyone?" I said stunned, "As far as I'm aware we are the only rational people in the Vault, and if the concentration of gas increases, even that is not guaranteed"

"No, you don't understand. I love being in these confined spaces, I feel safe, MUCH safer here, even with the gas, than outside with all the monsters, mutants, and the like. Doctor Church says that I have agroo...obia... agrora...obia" "Agoraphobia" I suggested. "Yes that sounds like it, Big Open Spaces terrify me. That's why I almost never go outside Megaton"

"So, how did the Slavers get you then? Did they attack Megaton?" "No!" She replied with a slight laugh, "Sheriff Simms, along with Deputy Weld and Stockholm make sure that doesn't happen. No, my best friend Silver was forced to leave Megaton, but she still lives nearby. So I went out to see her; if I go outside at night, I can cope temporarily, probably because I cannot see all that open space, only I didn't see those Slavers until they ambushed me"

"But, how did you cope, after they caught you, and daylight came" I asked curiously.

"I closed my eyes, and one of the other slaves guided me" She said with a faint smile "The Slavers thought I was a bit simple in my head or something."

"So, please can I stay? I can be the Vault Doctor, Nurse, or something" she pleaded "I help Doctor Church all the time, he even once admitted that I'm as nearly good as he is, and I'm a good chemist too, I make all the medicines and drugs that Doc Church uses, when we don't have any patients to deal with."

"Okay, you can stay, but the Vault Computer will probably insist on giving the GOAT first, it is a kind of test, supposed to gauge the best use of your skills/talents" I explained "But we can sort that tomorrow. Let's get cleaned up, and then some sleep"

There now followed a rather confusing time, where I had to explain to Sarah-Jane the importance of keeping clean, and the proper use of soap and shampoo. You would have thought that I had recommended bathing in Asp's Milk, when I mentioned the need to wash clothes in clean water, though considering how rare clean water is, maybe I practically did. But I was determined to re-establish basic hygiene standards, as soon as possible. This strange attitude that I was developing is probably due to that Domestic Goddess side-effect; I did briefly consider changing my hairstyle, but was worried that might saddle me, with some other attitude or compulsion.

Once, she had got over the shocking idea, she then went on to spend over a hour luxuriating in the first hot soapy bath she had ever had in her life, and to put on a clean Vault 106 suit.

In the meantime, I checked on the Computer Terminal to see if there was any more information available.

I found that my computer access was still primarily limited to just the areas concerning maintenance, but those reports were now more accurate, or had been updated, as the improved power situation, meant that a number of sub-systems were now able to power up, although most were simply reporting how badly damaged they were. There did seem to a large number of security cameras located all round the Vault, but infuriatingly I was denied access to their video feeds, as these were classified, as stated by Overseer Leris's Standing Orders and the security was such, that I couldn't hack around it.

Interestingly, there also seemed to be an unaccountable large power demand, from what the Vault map had listed as a small store-room located next to the kitchen area. I noted it on my white-board, for future investigation.

However, the item upmost on my list was now "FOOD", as with now two of us to feed, I had enough food for only one day, but that would have to wait until tomorrow.

Once Sarah-Jane was out of the bathroom, we decided to get some sleep: She volunteered to sleep on the settee in Lounge area, while I would sleep in the bedroom, as for some reason, neither of us felt comfortable with the idea of sleeping in the same room.


	8. Getting Sorted

**Chapter 8: Getting Sorted**

And then we went to sleep. How simple that sounds, and I only wish that it was that simple. It was very strange, as every night since I had arrived here, I had not had any difficulty in getting to sleep, and in fact often I was asleep almost before my head hit the pillow. BUT tonight! That was a completely different story, I just couldn't relax, as if I simply didn't feel safe or something, and as a result, I was trying to sleep with one eye open, also I kept checking my Pip-Boy every few minutes for any sign of danger, and every time it gave the 'all clear'.

In the end, I only managed to nod-off, by lying on my bed, with my .32 pistol nestling in my hand, and the 10mm pistol tucked securely under my pillow.

I awoke with jolt, a few hours later, and just barely avoided instinctively firing a bullet at my reflection in the mirror across the room. Although I was far from fully rested, I decided to give it up as a bad job, and get up and start the day.

When I entered the Lounge, I found that Sarah-Jane must have had similar problems sleeping, for she had moved the settee over to the far end of the room, and was sleeping nursing a large hammer in her arms.

I cleared my throat, so as to gently alert her of my presence, the sound was greeted with a panicked scream from Sarah-Jane, as she rolled off the settee, and shunted herself into the corner of the room, while at the same time frantically flailing the hammer about herself; it was amazing that she actually managed to reach the corner, without actually managing to hit anything. Once in the corner, she then started to wake up properly and realise where she was, and what she was doing. She stood up, blushing in embarrassment, and mumbled "Sorry, Bad Night".

With a slightly amused grin across my face, I asked "Is that normal?" to which she replied "No, normally I can sleep solidly anywhere; even when I was held by the Slavers, I had no problem sleeping"

"Maybe it is a lingering side-effect of the psycho-gas, which is increasing our paranoia, and thus preventing us from relaxing properly" I replied, and then concluded, "I think that until we can deal with the gas properly, we find some living quarters of your own, that way we can relax within our own individual rooms" She readily agreed to this suggestion.

The next obvious question then was where? It was not easy initially to decide, as the first nearest location was the quarters directly across the corridor, but they were too badly damaged to easily make habitable, plus the fact that I had been storing all psycho-gas cylinders, as well as using it as a morgue. Note to self: Find a better more permanent solution for both those issues.

The living quarters up the corridor towards the Atrium were in a reasonable condition, so that it would be fairly easy to make them habitable, but Sarah-Jane refused to even consider them, as that would mean she would be closer to any potential attackers.

However, when I described what I knew about the rooms below us, and I mentioned the Medi-Centre, she became very excited, at the opportunity to see a purpose-built set of rooms, rather than the rough shanty-town version that Megaton had, and insisted that we go and inspect it.

As we left my quarters, I offered her one of my spare .32 pistols for her self-protection, but was astounded when she refused on the grounds, that I "would be safer if she didn't".

Unfortunately, I wouldn't take 'No' for an answer, and insisted that she try, with the suggestion that she tried a couple of practice shots along the corridor.

Less than a minute later, I saw the wisdom of her refusal, as I lay on the ground, while she used a Stimpack, and some bandages to treat the bullet-hole in my leg. What I found hard to understand, as I lay there: Was how the hell she had managed to empty the pistol so fast? And how on earth had she managed to get two bullets embedded in the wall BEHIND us?

All Sarah would say as she gave the gun back, was "You're lucky. Stockholm limped for over a week, when Silver tried to teach me how to shoot, and Jericho said that if he ever saw me with a gun again, that he would immediately start shooting back in self-defence, and Sherriff Lucas had said something similar".

One thing for sure, Sarah-Jane was not going to a travelling companion for me, or at least not one which could 'watch my back' for me.

Once Stimpack had done its work, and my leg was in a good enough condition that I could use it, we moved off down a level to the Medi-Centre. The gas level had dropped slightly since my last visit, but its effects were still could be felt; so as a first immediate step, we adjusted the ventilation ducts, so that the gas drawn away; we then went into the incoming air vents, and disabled and removed all the psycho-gas cylinders there. I also nipped briefly down to the workshop level, and did the same to the ventilation down there.

The effects of the psycho-gas down on that lower level had been even worse, such that when I had returned slowly back up the stairs, I had keep a tight rein on my sanity, to avoid instinctively attacking Sarah-Jane on sight. Oddly enough, the fact that she was wearing the same kind of Vault-suit that I was, seemed to help the Madness accept her as an ally rather than a foe. Sarah-Jane wisely kept her distance for quite some time, to give me chance to recover.

In the meantime, while I regained my sanity, she was busily scampering around the Medi-Centre, crying out at all the wonderful equipment that was there. From her comments, it was clear that she recognised most of it, though for the most part she had only seen them either as badly repaired, or non-operational bits of kit, in Doc Church's Clinic, or had read about and see photos in them in books. Considering here was only meant to be a fairly basic Medi-Centre, it left me wondering how poorly equipped Doc Church's clinic was in Megaton was.

Once I was able to put get the Red Madness fully under control, I now started to check what we had here. With the improved energy status, a number of the doors on this level, were now no longer inaccessible, and as a result Sarah-Jane was able to hit the jackpot, as far as she was concerned, when she managed to open a previously inaccessible door in the Medi-Centre itself, which I had presumed was to a store-room, but instead it led to what had either been accommodation for the duty doctor, or a one-patient ward; Either way, Sarah-Jane cried "DIBS!" on having it as her new living quarters.

Also discovered in the room, was the mortal remains of Dr Paul Jones, who from the looks of it had suffered a violent death. However the sight of his faintly glowing Pip-Boy, gave me an idea; clearly the chances of finding any more unused Pip-Boys like mine were practically nil, and yet both in Vault 101 and Vault 108 (at least according to the game), the inhabitants still had access to a supply of Pip-Boys, so presumably there must be some way remove Pip-Boys from their previous owners and reuse them.

An examination of my Pip-Boy operator manual confirmed that supposition. So I proceeded to try and do so. The procedure involve required me to pop open a small cover on my Pip-Boy, which I had not previously noticed, which then gave me access to an extending lead that looked very similar to a USB cable, which I then plugged Dr Jones Pip-Boy 3000-A

This now enabled me to power up the other Pip-Boy, thus giving me access to all the surviving information stored on it, which was mostly medical texts, plus some brief details about Dr Jones, which basically confirmed that he had died only a few days after his last computer entry that I had read earlier. I backed-up all this information onto my Pip-Boy, which boosted my medical skill. I also made a mental note to upload a copy of the data on to the main-frame as soon as possible, just in case.

Critically the link also gave me access to the Pip-Boy Commands, which I now did, ordering it to return to 'factory default' settings. There was a brief flurry in the dust in and around the skeleton, as the various biometric probes retracted back into the Pip-Boy. The system auto-cleaned them as they withdrew, and after a brief self-test the Pip-Boy reported that it was in a fully operational condition – probably due to it only having one previous owner. I then issued one final command, which opened the Pip-Boy, so that I could remove it finally from Dr Jones.

As I carried out this final command, I wondered if maybe this explained why the Outcasts had been unable to get hold of a Pip-Boy to enable them to access the "Operation Anchorage" Simulator, in the game, because despite the fact they had captured/killed Gary 23, who had a Pip-Boy, they weren't able remove it without damaging it because they needed have another working Pip-Boy like I had to access it properly.

While I was busy with the Pip-Boys, Sarah-Jane was busy cleaning and tidying her new living quarters, and by time I was finished the en-suite bathroom was as clean and shiny as a new pin. She obviously wanted to match the standard; I had set with my own rooms

We sat down for a brief break, and I explained my idea, for her to also have a Pip-Boy so that she could become a proper Vault Resident. Admittedly she was a little cautious, but her willingness to have it increased, when I explained that her best and only chance of officially becoming the Vault Doctor, was if she had a Pip-Boy. The factor that finally won her over was when I mentioned the extensive medical texts that were stored on it.

As it seemed that now was the best time to proceed with it, we made our preparations, as thanks to my torturous experience, we were now forewarned. So Sarah-Jane lay down on her bed, after taking some Med-X, and some muscle-relaxant that she assured me would ease the process. Then I placed the Pip-Boy around her wrist, and it immediately began to deploy its biometric probes; our preparations paid off, for although she was in a lot of discomfort, it was tolerable, and while she didn't feel like moving about, she wasn't incapacitated either. This in turn seemed to help the Pip-Boy's calibration, which seemed to be progressing at much faster rate than it had for me.

I decided that while this was going on, that I would go and try and find some more food supplies; so I quickly explained that once she felt able to move about, she should have a read of the Pip-Boy's onboard manual, have a quick practice with its controls, and then proceed back to my room's computer terminal, and try and take the GOAT exam.

I went back up to the Atrium, and securely locking the corridor door behind me, so that Sarah-Jane wouldn't be disturbed. Now technically I should give my search food the highest priority, but I just couldn't resist the temptation, to go up into upper Atrium levels to see what was up there, especially of personal interest was the Overseers Office. So I headed in that direction, soothing my conscience with the optimistic thought that maybe there would be food supplies up there.


	9. The Upper Atrium

**Chapter 9 – The Upper Atrium**

With caution, I slowly approached the stair leading to the Upper Atrium, carefully examining every step and corner, as logic dictated to me, that as all the people who resided up there, knew what was really going, then surely they would have taken steps to deal with the consequences, but I could see no obvious signs of prepared defences.

On the half-landing, I found the remains of a barricade, with the bodies of two Vault-Security personnel, but the barricade had clearly been hastily thrown together by its two defenders only minutes before they had been over-run, there was even a filing cabinet lying on the stairs above, which they must have intended to add to the barrier.

The bodies had been stripped of anything useful long ago, but I paused briefly to salvage one of their Pip-Boys. The other Pip-Boy had received a direct hit from something and was smashed beyond repair.

At the top of the stairs, I found the lock of the door leading out onto the overhead walkways was broken, but a close examination of the lock showed that only the latching part of the lock was damaged, and I was able repair that in a matter of a few minutes. The astounding part was that the door's main lock bolts were undamaged, which meant that when the attack came, it had only been lightly locked, and not locked tight like I would have expected.

"Did these idiotic scientists really not consider what would happen?" I wondered out loud, as I looked around.

My search very quickly confirmed that my words had correctly predicted what had happened, of the fifteen Vault Resident remains that I found lying on the walkway, and nearby rooms, ten were the Researchers that had been assigned to the Vault, and the position of their bodies, and their injuries, as much as I could tell they were all of the type of unarmed self-defence, such as you see on C.S.I. where the victim holds his arms over his head to fend off the blows.

There were probably another 7 or 8 bodies that belonged to Vault invaders, such as Raiders, Wastelanders, and even one Talon Merc, though unfortunately his equipment was so badly damaged, that it was unusable, and beyond any possible repair.

The majority of the rooms were completely gutted to the extreme, almost as if whomever had targeted these rooms wanted to destroy every single trace of the occupants; every piece of furniture had been smashed down to basic components, and then the rooms had been torched. The only thing that was fairly clear there had been no attempt to fortify, or even lock any of the rooms – all the door locks were virtually undamaged, and in full working order.

The only usefully things that I was able to retrieve was about a dozen Pip-Boys which I removed from the bodies, sadly apart from the basic factory-default Pip-Boy system files, all any other data that may have been stored on them had been completely corrupted. Also I managed to salvage a badly damaged assault rifle, with about a dozen rounds of 5.56 ammo.

There were only two rooms that were exception to the rule. One was the Overseers Office, and the other was at the far end of the Upper Atrium, in fact looking at its location, it was the furthest room away from the top of the stairs.

I decided to investigate the Overseers office first, however as I approached the door, which appeared to be in a remarkably good condition, I must have triggered some kind of proximity sensor, for there suddenly boomed out of Vault PA system "_**PLEASE, MOVE AWAY FROM THE DOOR and RETURN TO YOUR QUARTERS**_", the next thing I knew I was walking down the stairs to the lower Atrium, intending to see how Sarah-Jane was, when a loud grumble/gurgle reminded me why I had gone upstairs for.

For several minutes, I stood there confused, as to why I should suddenly come back down. Then I returned back upstairs determined to complete my search of the upper Atrium, yet when I approached the Overseer's office door, again the announcement boomed out "_**PLEASE, MOVE AWAY FROM THE DOOR and RETURN TO YOUR QUARTERS**_". I was half way back to the top of the stairs, before I caught myself, and realised that I was doing it again.

I tried again to reach the door, but again something about the announcement made me back off, although on the last attempt it was only a step or two. It was extremely frustrating; as there was no way that I could reach that door and unlock it without that announcement stopping me.

So, I decided to go and look at the other room that hadn't been wrecked. I crept very carefully along the side of the corridor leading to it, as something seemed very odd about the situation. There were quite a number of bodies littering the floor: ten of which were clearly some of the original Vault Residents, as could be seen from their Pip-Boys, the rest were Raiders, or other later Vault Residents, who wore the Vault suits, but didn't have the corresponding Pip-Boy of an original resident.

My caution proved to be justified, when I reached the door, I found that it had been badly marked up by gunfire, be that either bullet or laser, but most significantly I found that a long slit had been burned through the door by either sustained laser fire or some other cutting torch. I was about to peer in through the slit, when I was saved by the sound of a very familiar clicking sound, I had nearly gone and looked up barrel of a Mk IV gun turret, which had been defending the room through the gun-slit.

The door's operating mechanism had suffered some damage over the years, but ironically the lock itself had been destroyed by some lucky shot, effectively the door was unlocked, but couldn't be opened as the door knob had come off. Fortunately, as I had my tools with me, it was fairly easy to fix.

The next bit was a bit more tricky, and risky. As the door slide open, I did a rapid dive and roll under the gun turret, wrapping my body around the pillar, before the gun could target me properly; it fired off about a dozen shots, but only one came close, it sliced a hole in the shoulder of my Vault suit, but without even grazing my skin. In that position under the gun turret, it was very easy to deactivate it.

Then all I had to do is get up walk over to the computer, and... **BANG!**,,,,, Damn that was close, the beggar who had this room, had set up booby-trap using an old Combat Shotgun, as a back-up to his gun turret; only the fact that my novel entry into the room meant my approach was from an unexpected angle, and that the state of shotgun, meant that it virtually destroyed itself with that shot, resulted in me escaping injury.

A careful scan around the room revealed that there were no more such surprises about.

Finally a room that met my expectations, the occupant of this room obviously knew something about what had been going on, and had taken precautions. For in addition to the gun turret, with its crude firing slit, and backup booby-trap, the occupant had constructed a rough back-stop to the gun turret out of the room's locker, chest of drawers, and bed frame. In one corner was several crates which like they contained food, although there was a worryingly large pile of empty food wrappers and tins in the opposite corner, and on a worn mattress was the mortal remains of room's owner, cradling a laser pistol.

A first logical step would be to investigate either the computer terminal or the Pip-Boy for information, however nature intervened with a wave of dizziness, and sudden cramping pain, as my stomach reminded me again, that I hadn't eaten yet today, and come to think about it, I hadn't been eating too regularly for the past few days. So I headed first for the food crates, and was greeted with almost complete disappointment, as they were empty, apart from a lone tin of Pork-N-Beans, which I quickly consumed in an attempt to ease the pain. The fact that I really enjoyed that meal, showed how desperate my body was for food. Clearly I couldn't delay looking for food any longer.

But first maybe some answers: The salvaging of the Pip-Boy revealed very little, other than the identity of its previous owner, the elderly Dr Monica Sullivan, who had been an expert on the 'Effects of Gases in Confined Spaces'. The computer terminal proved to be very informative, as she had kept a journal, and although some entries had become corrupted, most were intact.

_

* * *

__Day 1 – 23__rd__ October 2077:_

_They have finally done it - Global Nuclear Devastation. Barely managed to make it into the Vault 106,which is a marvel of technology and my fellow residents are the friendliest and most helpful people I have ever met in all my 60 years old_

_Maybe there is hope for the future of mankind still._

_Day 9:_

_Something strange is going on. The Overseer Dr Albert Leris has ordered me to deploy gas sensors throughout the Vault, supposedly on Health and Safety grounds. Surely the possibility of dangerous gas build-up would have been dealt with years ago in the design stage. _

_At least it has meant that I could fully explore the Vault; Was surprised when I visited kitchens, that we don't have a hydroponics section, just a vast cavern laden with food to last us all for over a decade. I just hope it is enough._

_Day 11:_

_There is a problem with the Vault; the new gas sensors have detected the presence of some kind of unknown gas in the Vault atmosphere, especially in the lower levels. I have raised my concerns with the Overseer, but he says that he is aware of the problem, and it is being sorted._

_To avoid any unnecessary panic, the other Residents are being told there is nothing wrong._

_Add.:- I am having some kind of problem with my hearing aids. They keep picking up a strange buzzing noise, especially when there are announcements of the Vaults PA system. Charlie in Maintenance said he would have a look at them._

_Day 15:_

_The gas levels are still increasing. A number of people reporting feeling strange, or unwell, and there is increasing tension in the Vault. The effects seem to range from increased nervousness, reoccurrences of old childhood nightmares to increase aggressiveness and general bad-temperedness. The Overseer's announcements seem to be preventing problems._

_Add.: Good News - Charlie has sorted my hearing aids. He couldn't find what was wrong, so he tightened up the audio filter setting, so that it will only amplify sound that is within normal hearing range. This is good news as I am nearly completely deaf without them._

_Day 19:_

_The situation is not improving, and the Residents are getting worried; they are forming protective groups (or gangs for want of a better word), usually based around where they work such as 'Maintenance', or 'Kitchen Staff' There have even been a few outbreaks of violence between the groups, but Vault Security are keeping things under control._

_The Overseer has decreed that the Upper Atrium is off-limits to all, but those who live up here, also all our meals are now being delivered to the bottom of the stairs by the kitchen staff, to save us the long trip down the cafeteria. So far everyone is complying with this order._

_Day 24:_

_Things are getting rapidly worse. The gas levels are still increasing, and we had our first deaths only yesterday: two suicides and one maintenance guy went berserk, and killed 3, and badly injured another 6, before he could be stopped permanently by Security. There was a major brawl in the Atrium this morning, which left over a dozen badly injured._

_I managed to get a group of worried scientists together, and we requested Overseer that we must take some precautions, such as getting a stockpile of supplies: food, weapons, etc, as everything is down below in areas controlled by one faction or another. Also we need some defensive barriers or something, in case things turn really nasty. But, the Overseer, who no-one has actually seen outside of his office for nearly a week now, responded over the PA system, telling us that "__**Thanks to advice from his friend Richard Rubin, the Overseer in Vault 92 and in line with Vault-Tec instructions**__" He had already taken measures, that would ensure that there "__**is no problem**__", and that we "__**do not need to do anything more**__"._

_Suddenly I went from one of many concerned voices, to the 'Lone voice crying out in the wildernesses", as everyone relaxed and went back to their rooms._

_No one will listen to me now. Nevertheless I am going to do something tonight._

_Day 28:_

_Things went critical yesterday. There was another huge fight in the lower Atrium, with dozens killed or injured, and Vault Security is now almost none existent, apart from a couple of guards who are stationed up here, the rest are either dead or have joined one of the factions. _

_After the fight had been raging for over an hour, with Overseer watching from his office window, and the rest of us from the overhead walkways, the Overseer ordered over the PA system for "__**ALL RESIDENTS TO RETURN THEIR QUARTERS**__", and amazingly AGAIN, as if my magic, the mob instantly stopped fighting and began to disperse._

_Then that idiot Smithy got his camera out, with its extra large flash-bulb, and took a photo of the scene. They all stopped and looked up, staring as if they were only seeing us for the first time. ... There was blood-curdling howl, and they stormed the stairs leading up to us. I don't believe the two guards managed to fire more than a couple of shots before they were overrun, and everyone else just stood there like stuffed dummies. I... I ran like all the demons of Hell were at my back, and they probably were. I was hardly halfway down the corridor before the screams started, and what I heard before I closed and locked my door, haunts me even now._

_I have spent today working hard fortifying my room. I unpacked a gun turret I stole from stores, and managed to burn a firing slit in the door. I only have a handful of energy cells left for my gun now. I have even put up a wall to stop any stray bullets. I have never worked so hard in years; I think I may have over done it. Don't feel well._

_Day 45:_

_I am still alive just. I had a bad heart attack, or something, after my last entry, which has left me very weak. I am almost out of food now, and the last of my Buffout wore off an hour ago. I doubt I will last much longer._

_So I wish to record this last message, to whoever finds this vault. Vault 106 did not die by accident or misfortune, but was cold-bloodedly murdered by that evil despot Dr Albert Leris. My records show that the gas levels rose shortly before nearly every major fight in the Atrium. He must have been controlling the leaks, and then sat and watched the results from his window, like a demonic vulture. I pray to God that he receives punishment for his crime against humanity, for alas it cannot come from my hands..._

* * *

I stood for several minutes, wiping tears from my eyes (it must be these damned female hormones), after I close the last computer entry, still thinking of those last words from the dying days of the Vault's history.

I turned and solemnly address Monica Sullivan's mortal remains "Though you will probably never know this, your journal has given the Vault a chance, for it has told me how to get into the Overseer's office, and thus maybe stop this hell", then I covered her body with a blanket, to grant her some dignity until some method of disposing the body properly could be arranged.

I quickly searched through the room for anything of use, but apart from the laser pistol and the gun turret, and a rucksack in one of the lockers, there was nothing else of value.

As I packed all the Pip-Boys that I had salvaged into the rucksack so that I could transport, I ran my thoughts back over what I had just read.

Clearly the majority of the Researchers that Overseer Leris had brought with him into the Vault had been unaware of the secret Vault-Tec experiment, and had been as much victims as the rest of the Vault Residents; likely only the Overseer himself was in the know.

Also from what I could recall from the game: Vault 92 had been doing something similar to the experiment here, only they had been using certain sound waves to stimulate violent and aggressive behaviour in otherwise very passive people. The Overseer there has rushed things because he placed too much confidence in the Control Commands that had been placed in the residents' brains. The game hadn't as far as I could recall spelled out how this had been done, but now thanks to Dr Sullivan's Journal, I had the answer. She had reported that her hearing aids had picked up a buzzing noise, until they had been adjusted; also she seems to have been the only person that wasn't under the thrall of the Overseer. Since Vault 92's experiments proved that some sound frequencies provoked aggression, logically there must also be sounds that induce a hypnotic state, or at least makes people compliant to orders, Leris must have rigged up something similar here, not realising that this would eventually fail.

Once I found some ear-plugs or ear defenders, I should be able reach the Overseer's office, and do something, about all this.

But as I reached these happy conclusions, I heard something that was far from good news, the great Vault Door opening, and then closing, and from the voices it was clear that the Raiders had returned...


	10. The Vault Crazies Last Stand

**Chapter 10 – The Vault Crazies' Last Stand**

After a rapid, but a quiet dash (a contradiction in actions, but I managed it), I found myself peering over the edge of the walkway, down into the Lower Atrium, at the group of Raiders who were carefully entering the area.

They were certainly very unlike any Raider, I had ever seen. There was about seven or eight of them, and if you assumed that a normal raider outfit was their basic combat level, then these guys and girls were definitely the Heavy Mob. Their clothes were much more heavily armoured than usual, with shoulder, elbow and knee-pads, and what looked like flak jackets fashioned from a variety of Combat Armours. One of them was even wearing a set of power-armour, which he had salvaged from some dead Outcast, although it did look like from its condition, and his general movements that he was largely using his own great muscle-strength to move it rather than servo-power.

Their weapons were also very much on the high combat power level: the lowest level being assault rifles, there was a least one sniper rifle, one female raider had a missile launcher, and the hulk in the power armour had a flamer.

They must have triggered some kind of proximity sensor, for suddenly "_**VAULT DEFENCES HAVE BEEN BREACHED! DESTROY THE INVADERS!**_" blasted from the Vault PA system, the sub-Sonics in the messages was cranked up so high, that I could almost physically hear it, and from all the air vents poured the psycho-gas. The combined effect was clearly enough to shake even these hardened fighters, causing a few to look a bit dazed, and one to actually open fire on his colleagues, but he was shot to pieces before he could do much harm.

From deep within the Vault, came the answering howl to the 'Call to Arms', as the various crazed Residents responded. Even up where I was above the gas cloud, I was driven to respond by sub-sonic enhanced command, but as I was free of the Red Madness, I could think clearly, so I ran back to Monica Sullivan's room, and grabbed hold of the gun turret, unplugged it and, and wheeled it_ (Thank Goodness, it was on castors)_, with its control terminal balanced on top, out onto the overhead walkway bridge, and plugged it in to a nearby power socket, and powered it up.

While I was doing this, the first of the Vault Residents had started to arrive, and were getting massacred; most were not even getting through the doors into the Atrium before they were getting blown away, by the intense Raider gunfire.

Desperately to save time, I opted for a default FFI _(Friend-Foe Identification)_ setting, which designated all non-Vault Residents as designated targets, and let it loose. The sudden burst of heavy laser fire from above, caught the Raiders by surprise, dropping two of their number, including the one with the missile launcher, before the rest could take shelter underneath the walkways, where the gun turret could not target them. The Raider's confusion also gave the surviving Vault Crazies their chance to emerge in sufficient numbers, that they carry the fight to the Raiders despite heavy losses.

At least two more Raiders fell to the Residents, but there had been too many killed, and it was clear that unless I intervene quickly, this would be an outright Raider Victory.

So grabbing my assault rifle, with its partly filled magazine, I took a deep breath, and charged downstairs to the melee. However by the time, I had reached bottom, the fighting was rapidly fading out, but fortunately due to the hallucinations from the gas, the Raiders had not realised that, so I was able to target the biggest threat unopposed: the goon in the power armour; Seriously, this guy was built like a tank, and could probably out arm-wrestle super mutants for fun. I couldn't take any chances, so I let fly with my entire magazine into his back. The flamer tank ruptured under the assault, covering the guy with flames; if the power armour had been good state of repair, the occupant would have been alright, but thanks to my bullets, and the ones that had killed the original Outcast owner, the burning fuel was able to flow into the armour.

For the next few seconds, I was entertained by the sight of a power-suited figure which seemed to be frantically dancing the Highland-Fling, as the Raider attempted to extradite himself out of the flaming suit.

My enjoyment was cut short, as the other two Raiders now became aware of my presence, and cut loose in my direction. Before I could duck, a 5.56 round hit my arm, forcing me to drop my rifle; it also resulted in me giving any involuntary gasp of pain, so that I got a lungful of almost pure psycho-gas from a nearby vent. The Red Madness came roaring forward from where it been hiding in the back of my brain, and I charged forward in full berserker mode, blazing away with my .32 pistol.

Thanks to their body armour, my wild shooting was largely ineffective, though it did drive one Raider out from his shelter, so that he could be gunned down by the damaged but still operable gun turret.

Finally, just as when I was literally approaching point-blank range, I hit his companion under the chin, with one of my last bullet mortally wounding him, and taking him out of the fight.

I turned to last remaining raider, who was now free of the smouldering power armour. I had to admit he was an impressive sight; he could have acted as a stunt-double for the Incredible Hulk, without any need for additional padding, just a coat of green paint. My only chance was that now he was no longer wearing the helmet, was that he was now getting the full effect of the psycho-gas, which meant that he didn't know where his real opponents were.

But he was from far from an easy target, one crazed Resident leapt at him wielding a tire-iron, but his blow bounced off without causing any apparent damage. That had been enough for the Hulk, who grabbed his assailant, and flung him bodily across the room; I swear he bounced off the ceiling, before the body smashed into a wall, and slithered down, and lay belly-down on the floor, with his face staring up at the ceiling.

The remnants of my sanity could do little more than scream in terror, as it rode as unwilling passenger on Red Madness's death-ride. The throw had turned the Hulk's back towards me, so I charged forward, pulling out my combat knife as I did so, then leapt high onto his back wrapping my arms around his head and plunged my knife upwards under his chin, so that the blade entered his brain... But this didn't even seem to faze him; he reached over his shoulder, grabbed me by the back of my Vault-suit, and flung me across the room, so that I crashed dazed into the far corner.

As the stars started to clear, I realised in horror that he had come over and was reaching out, so as to give me another flying lesson. I took the only route available to me; I kicked hard against the wall, and slid on my back, straight between his legs. He bent to grab me as I shot past, but he momentarily distracted when he found that he couldn't bend his head forward – thanks to hilt of my knife hitting his chest.

As I continued to scoot myself across the floor, he swung round, while his right hand reached up to investigate the obstruction under his chin. Upon finding the knife hilt, he grabbed it, and pulled it out. A strange expression spread across his face, but before it could become anything I could identify, his eyes rolled upwards, and he toppled forward, hitting the ground with a force that felt like that of a felled tree.

Still in the throes of the Red Madness, I now turned my attention on anything which moved, which was primarily the Radroaches that had emerged to attack the dead and dying. This attack continued until there was another announcement over the PA system "_**THE DANGER HAS PASSED. ALL RESIDENTS ARE TO RETURN TO THEIR QUARTERS IMMEDIATELY**_", and while my rational mind wanted to remain to complete my investigation, the Madness reacted to the command, as if it was perfectly acceptable, and promptly headed off in that direction.

As I approached my rooms, I could clearly hear the sound of music coming from the Clinic on the floor below; I vainly tried to regain control, as the Red Madness charged me down the stairs to eliminate the perceived intruder.

I burst through the door, and saw Sarah-Jane across the room, sorting some equipment. Her initial welcoming simile faded, as she saw the state of me, and with a frightened squeak, she dived for a nearby shelf, and grabbed something, as I charged with a howl across the room.

She turned and sprayed something into my face, and which I got a good lungful of, and then she dived to one side. A wall of blackness engulfed me, and I was out cold, even before I'd body-slammed into the wall, and crumpling to the floor.


	11. Waking Up & Vault Lockdown

**Chapter 11 – Waking up and Vault Lockdown**

_I was walking down the city street, on the pavements were crowds of friendly people, and numerous cars drove past on the road. I glanced at my reflection in a shop window; I looked great in my shirt and jacket, and my recently-cut short brown hair, though I clearly could do with losing a few pounds – OK, several pounds of weight._

_There was sudden shift, and I noticed that people were starting to stare at me strangely, in an almost hostile fashion, I glanced down at myself to try and see what could be the problem, and saw that I was no longer wearing my jacket, but instead wore a blue boiler suit, No, a blue Vault-suit._

_As I stared down, something moved across my line of vision, I grabbed it and looked at it more closely, it was hair, RED hair, LONG, RED HAIR!_

_I turned quickly to my left, and stared at my reflection in the nearest shop window, and saw that I was not looking at a reflection of my own face, but the reflection of Jenny Saunders._

_I gazed frozen my image in the window, and then there was a bright flash behind me, that reflected off the glass, and blinded me for a few minutes._

_As my vision slowly returned, I saw that my reflection had gone, as had most of the shop window. I spun round, and was met with the sight of utter devastation: Blackened and broken buildings lay in every direction, Burnt out cars and other vehicles were scattered along the streets, The crowds of people had vanished, and for the most part replaced with their shattered remains, the reminder seemed to a mixture of Feral Ghouls, towering Super Mutants, and cackling Raiders, all of whom had seen me, and were charging towards me._

_I couldn't move; I was frozen to the spot. My closest attacker – a leering half-nude Raider swung his knife above his head, and plunged it deep into my arm._

* * *

I woke with a jerk, and a scream, and found myself staring wildly into the anxious face of Sarah-Jane, as she quickly put down an empty hypodermic syringe, and picked up another.

"Jenny!" She asked, her voice full of concerned, and with her hand tensed, ready to plunge the syringe needle into me at moment's notice "Jenny!, How are you feeling? Are you OK?"

I slumped back, and stared up at the gleaming white ceiling, with the smell of antiseptic in the air, I took a deep breath of relief to be free of that terrible dream; a gasp that instantly turned into a GASP OF PAIN.

My chest felt like it had been caved in... No, more than that, as my brain started getting reports from all over my body: my breasts felt like they had been crushed in a vice and the whole front of my body felt like it had been used as punch-bag.

I instinctively tried to move my right hand up to assess the damage, but found that it was strapped down, so was my left hand, and then with rising panic I rapidly discovered that my legs, and even my chest was securely fastened to the bed.

"What the Hell is going on? I feel like I've been hit by a truck, and why am I strapped down?"

"Excellent, that's wonderful", she shouted, and started dancing around the room.

"It doesn't feel that good from here" I complained.

"Sorry!" she replied unabashed, and started undo my straps, explaining as she went "but it is the first time in 3 days that you haven't tried to kill me. I was beginning to think that the damage was permanent."

"What damage?" I worriedly interrupted "And why do I feel so sore?"

"From the gas!" came her reply "You inhaled a near toxic level of that psycho-gas, if it had been only a fraction more; you would have been permanently insane. As it is, it has taken over three days, and a lot of this old de-tox, just to get the worst of it out of your system."

"And my aches and pains" I encouraged

"Well, I have treated the four bullet holes, and several deep cuts and gashes that you had, plus you had cracked a bone in your wrist, which I did by using a combination of bandages and Stimpacks" Sarah continued "But Stimpacks don't work on bruises"

"Something else that the game neglected to highlight" I muttered

"Pardon?"

"Nothing, go on"

"Oh right" said Sarah-Jane "any way, you got a lot of bruises while you were out and about, and the way that you hit that wall when I disabled you, did you no favours"

As she helped me to painfully sit up, I saw my reflection in a mirror, and she wasn't kidding; the whole front of my body was one solid bruise, from my feet, right up to a pair of beautiful black eyes, it was amazing that I could even feel like moving at all.

"Just what on Earth did you hit me with?" I inquired.

"Well, after you left, I finished up cleaning the clinic, and I found a couple of spray cans, and some of Dr Jones's notes. He had been trying to work out a way of treating those who had been exposed to the psycho-gas, but obviously most of his patients didn't appreciate his help, so he made up some sprays that contained a mixture of his de-tox, and what he called a instant 'Mickey Finn', fortunately there was still some left in the cans, so I kept it handy, in case you ran into problems".

As she told me this, I gazed round the clinic, and was astounded; the room literally gleamed, and looked pristine. I would have bet serious money, that it had never looked this good, even when it had been brand-new, and I told her so.

Sarah-Jane blushed red with embarrassment at the compliment, and in an attempt to brush it aside, said that after her GOAT exam on my computer which had confirmed her officially as the Vault Doctor, that she decided that she simply wanted HER clinic to look as good, as the ones shown in all the medical books she had studied over the years. She concluded with the comment that she upload a list of jobs, for my attention of all the repairs that needed to be done, to make the place complete.

I promised that I would have a look at her list as soon as possible, but I needed to fix the Main Vault Door first.

"Why? What's wrong with it?" She asked puzzled

"It keeps letting people in" I replied "and after that last attack; I don't believe there is anyone else, other than the two of us left to defend the Vault. I have got to disable that door, until we are ready to open it again to visitors"

"Okay, but this time I'm coming with you, just in case" she responded

So, after carefully pulling on a clean Vault suit that she must have got from my room we headed back up the stairs. We paused briefly to pop into the Morgue to collect two of the fullest gas cylinders, as I wanted to leave a surprise for any unwanted visitors outside the Vault Door, if that was possible.

The atmosphere in the Atrium was foul, for while the psycho-gas had cleared, the stench of death filled the air, and the Radroaches who would have normally cleaned up, had not survived the aftermath of the battle.

I quickly collected a new assault rifle, and we searched the bodies for some ammo for it. We hit a small jackpot, as the Raider Hulk's body had a pair of frag-mines hooked on his belt. Then, after retrieving my tools, we moved onwards to the Vault Entrance.

Not surprisingly, the Vault Door was closed, so while Sarah placed the gas cylinders alongside the door, I started to work on the Door's control panel. I very quickly found that not only was the control panel incomplete, but that the controls for opening the door had been bypassed, and been wired to some other control system within the Vault.

As I tried to puzzle out what had been done, the hatch leading to the Atrium suddenly slammed shut and locked. This was quickly followed by a siren, and an orange beacon started flashing, as the Vault Door began to open behind me.

As Sarah-Jane dashed to the Atrium hatch, and desperately tried to open it, I tried to stop the opening cycle, but the system had been designed, so that when the door starts to open (or close for that matter), the control cycle must be completed before it can be reversed.

I crouched down, with my rifle at the ready, but once the door was fully open, it revealed no-one, just an empty tunnel, or rather one that was void of any living thing.

I crept forward to doorway, and peered into the tunnel, there was no-one there, no-one who could have opened the door, and in fact the external control panel looked in worse condition than the one on the inside. Up at the far end of the tunnel, I could see daylight streaming through the gaps in the door at the end, and worryingly I could hear voices and signs of movement beyond it.

Sarah was crouching at the foot of the hatchway, staring in terror at the open Vault Door; she was not going to be much help in defending the Vault. I dragged the two gas cylinders through the entrance and placed them part-way up the tunnel, with the two Frag-mines planted next to them. I then retreated back through the Vault Door.

My plan was: if the owners of the voices turned out to be friendly, I would warn them off, so that could disable my booby trap, but if they were hostile I was going to slam the door closed, and leave them to the gas.

The door at the end of the tunnel swung open, and four figures entered the tunnel. "Halt, and identify yourself" I shouted. Their response was a mixed volley of gun and laser fire, and the cry of "Forward Talon Company" confirmed my worst fears.

I gave a quick volley in reply, to slow them up by having to duck and take cover, and then I dived to the control panel, and hit the 'Close' button hard.

I then rolled back, and fired though the closing gap, to buy more time for the Door to close; it was very close, just before the door was fully closed, I heard the bang as the mines exploded, and there was a puff of gas around the edge of the door, before it sealed tight.

I then dashed to the nearby fuse-board, and pulled the fuses for the Door Mechanism, one thing for sure, I was determined that the Door wasn't going to open again until I said so; The Vault was in lockdown; Though I did quietly worry whether I had trapped us in here forever.

Suspiciously, now that the Vault Door was closed, the Hatch to the Atrium automatically unlocked, and opened.

I now turned to Sarah-Jane who was now starting to get over her panic attack, and exclaimed frustrated "How the hell, did they know that the Vault Door was open?"

"Probably from your robotic messenger" she suggested

"My what?"

"Your Messenger, the strange looking Eyebot, you know the 'Pied Piper' that you keep sending out every so often, inviting people to come into the Vault for safety"

I could feel a cold chill run down my spine. Vault 106 experiment had not ended almost 200 years ago, it was still ongoing


	12. Legend of the Pied Piper

**Chapter 12: The Legend of the Pied Piper**

I slumped down on the edge of the platform, next to the Door Controls, and prepared to hear the 'other shoe to drop'.

"OK, who or what is the 'Pied Piper'?" I asked wearily, although I was pretty sure that I wouldn't like the answer.

"But surely ..." Sarah-Jane started to say, but I interrupted "Just assume that I have just arrived on this planet, and just answer the question."

"Well, OK, but I never really paid attention, as it is, or rather I always thought that it was a myth, an urban legend, like the 'Puppet-man of Vault 77' and the "Pint-sized Slasher", a tall tale told by traders, and folk like Jericho and Billy Creel who have travelled the Wastelands; as way to get free drinks. I just thought it was a load of bunkum, as the stories have been around supposedly for years, decades, maybe even centuries, but the Raiders that I was brought in here by, said that it was true, and swore to my captors, that the Pied Piper had been seen again, announcing that 'There were some vacancies in the Vault' and that 'the Vault Door would be open for a brief period to allow entry, for anyone looking to escape the nuclear holocaust.', though as far as the Raiders were concerned this was a chance for some easy loot and slaves"

Sarah-Jane paused briefly, as she settled herself down comfortably on the floor, so I jumped in with "Any details about the Pied Piper itself? Like why is it called that?"

Sarah continued, after giving me a slightly annoyed look at my impatience "From people say, it looks like one of those 'Mr Gutsy' robots, which has collided with an Enclave's Eyebot. Some ancient lonesome Raider called 'Hopalong' who lived years ago, near here at a place called 'Kaelyn's Bed and Breakfast', he had called it 'The Pied Piper', and constantly warned everyone to stay away or the 'The Pied Piper will get you', but I don't know why he called it that"

I made an educated guess, and quickly told Sarah the story of the 'Pied Piper of Hamelin', and that based on that, I explained that it was very likely he had been the sole survivor of a gang, who had followed the Pied Piper into the Vault, but thanks to his implied disability that had given him his name, he had not been able to keep up, and so had failed to get into the Vault before it closed up, imprisoning his friends in a death-trap.

Sarah-Jane started to turn pale, as she began to realise the enormity of what I was implying. "Dear God! that means those files might be correct!"

"What files?" I interrupted

"Oh! Well, when I was given the job as Vault Doctor, my Pip-Boy was given a data download. Mostly personnel medical files, and BMD _(Births/Marriages/Deaths)_ records; Nothing about the psycho-gas or anything" She quickly explained, as she saw my increasing interest and wanting to avoid raising my expectations too high.

"Anyway I have complete detailed medical records for an initial 106 people, excluding us, who must have been the original occupants of the Vault, as there are references to their Pip-Boys. But the BMD files, lists nearly 10,000 deaths, but only a handful of births. I just thought that it was some kind of data-logging error, or that the file had corrupted, especially as most of those who died were called 'John Doe' or 'Jane Doe' followed by a number, which didn't make sense, but now... it means that this place has been killing people non-stop for years."

"But, there is no way that many bodies lying around here!" I objected

"Maybe, but given enough time, Radroaches can dispose of just about anything, including bones" she countered

To try and partly distract her from the grisly subject, I asked "Has no-one ever tried to destroy the robot?"

"Not really, according to the stories any who try to harm the Pied Piper is cursed with madness and death, so everyone leaves it alone." She replied.

"More like, it is armed with a bottle of the psycho-gas" I responded.

Then reality of the situation came crashing back over me once more "Damn it!" I exclaimed in frustration.

"What?" Sarah-Jane asked startled, at my sudden vehemence.

"Oh," I explained "it just that it is one crisis after another. And none of the problems have been fully solved. We stabilised the power situation for the moment, but the Primary Power is still offline, because that level is full of gas, and the Secondary Reactor desperately needs some fresh nuclear fuel, as what we have won't last for very long. We have no food, and there some weird defence system on the Overseer Office; and now there is this 'Pied Piper' robot that needs stopping"

"Well, I do have some Good News and some Bad News" she responded, "The Good News is that Dr Jones had stockpiled some food supplies in his quarters. I guess with all the fighting and gas induced paranoia, everyone was. But anyway we do have enough food for about another week, so we have a little time to deal with that problem." She concluded with an encouraging smile.

"And the Bad News?" I asked warily

Her face took on a slightly grim expression "We need to do something about all the dead bodies that are lying about. You probably didn't notice, when we hurried here through the Atrium, but those bodies there are starting to smell pretty ripe, and there is a real risk of disease, unless we do something"

"Any suggestions?" I responded

"Yes, but I need you to confirm what I think that I have found" came the reply.

We both stood up, but before we headed back into the Vault, I insisted that we first tidied up the Vault Entrance area, in particular that all the parts from the Vault-Door control panel was put safely in a small crate in the corner of the room, so that we might have chance to complete the panel repairs, that had been started almost two centuries earlier.

As we passed through the Atrium, heading down to the Medi-Centre level, I realised that Sarah-Jane had a point, as the stench from bodies seemed even worse, than when we had passed through here earlier, and things could get even more serious, unless we acted quickly.

Once down in the corridor outside her quarters, Sarah-Jane pointed down to the far end of the corridor, where a store-room door stood slightly ajar, and there was a steady stream of fairly concentrated psycho-gas flowing out, though fortunately thanks to the now improved ventilation in this part of the Vault, the gas was being drawn down the stairs to the next level, and straight into an extraction vent.

"I was looking for cleaning supplies for the Medi-Centre" she explained, "But when I opened that door after forcing the lock, there was a loud bang, and the room started to fill with that gas. I managed to close the door most of the way, but I must have damaged door mechanism, as it won't close properly, as you can see. I have kept clear of it since then. But before I closed the door, I am pretty sure I saw box labelled as containing something for disposing of bodies."

"Okay well, we need to do something about that gas, before we do anything else" I replied, "Wait, here a moment". And then I hurried back up to the Atrium, and spent an unpleasant 15 minutes or so, rummaging among the decomposing bodies for Power Armour Helmet, that the Raider Hulk had discarded, when he did his impromptu striptease. I found it hanging off the edge of the over-head walkway; luckily it seemed none the worse for its brief flight.

The Helmet looked to be in fair shape, considering it was probably over 200 years old and fairly hard years at that. There were signs that it had been repaired and patched up several times over the years, but looking at the quality of the repairs, most of them had probably been done by trained armourers, either Brotherhood of Steel, or Outcast.

However since the armour had fallen into Raider hands, things had gone down-hill, and now most of the electronics were almost completely destroyed, but the part that interested me the most was intact: the air filter. With a bit of luck, it would be able to filter out the psycho-gas enough for me to be able to do something, although with helmet's air circulation fan defunct, I would have to rely on pure lung-power.

I quickly tried it on, but ripped it off even quicker. The Hulk must have had a terminal case of halitosis, or something. I would have to give it a good clean-out before I would be able to stand using it.

Fortunately Sarah-Jane had found plenty of cleaning supplies, and so this didn't take long to do.

Now we were ready, I got Sarah-Jane to withdraw up to the next level up, for safety's sake, and I put on the helmet, with it sealed up, I headed for the store-room door, with the smell of disinfectant filling my nose, and sounding like an asthmatic Darth Vader.

The door's controls were in a such terrible state, that my only conclusion was that it wasn't Sarah-Jane's efforts that prevented the door from closing, but rather the accumulation of damage from repeated attacks on it over the years, which seem to have included gun and laser-fire.

The door motor had burnt itself out trying to close the door, but there was just enough of a gap around the edge of the door, for me to get a screw-driver through, and onto the manual door release, disengaging the motor, so that I could then fully open the door easily, with the aid of a crow-bar.

I was greeted with a billow of near pure psycho-gas, there was so much gas in the air that my Pip-Boy's 'Low Oxygen Level' alarm bleeped momentarily, but now with the door fully opened the gas was free to flow and down to the lower Vault levels, where the air purification system could deal with it.

For the most part the helmet's filter seemed to be working, but I could feel the Red Madness stirring again in the back of brain, either some gas was managing to leak in, or possibly more worryingly I maybe absorbing it through the skin; Just in case, I withdrew temporarily to the other end of the corridor, until the worst of the gas had gone.

Once it had cleared somewhat, I took the chance and carefully entered the store-room. It contained a large portion of the Vault's dirty secret. There were at least 40 gas cylinders inside, most of which were still full of psycho gas, plus there were about 30 empty slots, which I assume must have held the cylinders that are currently deployed around the Vault.

As the air cleared of gas, I could now see the cause of the bang that Sarah-Jane heard, it was a Combat Shotgun booby-trap, which she must have triggered when she started to enter. It has missed, but whoever had rigged the trap, had played clever, by positioning it so that if it missed its target, it would hit some of the gas cylinders; So that if the pellets didn't get them, the gas would.

As I moved further into room, I discovered a second shotgun booby-trap, which I was able to disarm. At this rate, I should have a fairly respectable armoury if and when I leave the Vault, I thought, but while I was mentally patted myself on the back with that idea, I walked round the end of the row of gas cylinders, only to find myself literally staring straight down the barrel of a laser pistol; I was so close that my nose was touching the end of the muzzle.

I nearly died of fright on the spot, but as my eyes focused past the pistol, I realised that I had walked into an ambush nearly 200 years late.

The potential ambusher had wedged himself upright on a using a couple of sets of crutches, with his gun hand balanced on the edge of the cylinder rack. From his clothing and his Pip-Boy, it was clear that he had been one of the original residents.

I moved past the body, then carefully removed the crutches and laid his remains down on the ground. After which I went through his personal effects: his Pip-Boy's data files had been wiped by some security software command, however in his Vault-suit breast pocket, there was an old-fashioned notebook, the contents of which revealed that he had been one of the researchers assigned to the Vault, and who had probably been in the know regarding its secret.

Most of the writing was undecipherable due to a combination of appalling handwriting, and extensive use of code-worded jargon, but the last few entries had been written in the clear, basically as a 'Last Will and Testament'.

In short, Professor ******* (name unreadable), had been up in the Upper Atrium when it was attacked, but had escaped by jumping off the walkway, dropping down behind the rampaging mob, thus avoiding his escape being unobserved. This was kind of lucky on his part, as the fall had shattered his left ankle, leaving him a very slow moving target, so he had needed a lot of luck to evade the mob.

He had somehow managed to drag himself down here, and lock himself in, but as he noted, that he had practically no food or water, and definitely no medical supplies, he noted that his '_chances of survival were slim, but was prepared to go down fighting. Like a man, standing on his own two feet_' Two hundred years later, I could at least testify that he did indeed succeed in doing that to a degree.

But back to the present-day, I quickly modified the room vents, so the remaining psycho-gas in the air could be cleared as quickly as possible. Then onto the whole reason for coming into this store-room, looking for the way of disposing of the various cadavers that lay about the Vault; on the shelving rack near the door was a large crate marked with label "War Department Property", and underneath was the Contents label "Bags – Body, for the disposable of. Contents: 100"

When I opened the crate, and took out one of the bags, I was able to confirm despite the confusing Military-Speak label, that these were indeed Body-Bags very similar to those seen on news footage of some natural disaster on television, or whatever they called them here.

There was one unexpected difference though; each bag had some kind of strange gas cylinder attached, with a button labelled 'Ignition'. An examination of the multi-lingual instructions and pictograms revealed that these bags had an interesting feature. The cylinder contained a quantity of Flamer Fuel, which once you sealed the body inside the bag, you released into the bag and then ignited, safely & cleanly incinerating the body, and reducing it bones and all, to an easy to dispose of fine ash. According to the instructions, you could use the bag three times, before it needed to be emptied, and the gas cylinder refilled; Very valuable find for us, but a grim confirmation that Vault-Tec fully intended to kill people.

I carried the crate up to where Sarah-Jane was sheltering, and from there we continued up to the Atrium, and commenced clearing the bodies: stripping anything of value from them, before placing them in the body-bags.

Sarah-Jane insisted that all the cremated remains should be placed into a storage drum, with all due reverence, with the stated intention scattering them later outside the Vault, as she felt that all who had died, would rest easier knowing that at least some part of them has escaped the Vault, to see the sky once more. I did not query that odd semi-religious logic, as somehow it felt strangely right to do this.

Once, we had cleared the Atrium itself, Sarah-Jane insisted that I leave her to carry on, while deal with the other remaining outstanding issues.

So, my next question, is what should I do next?


	13. The Air Filtration System

**Chapter 13 – Air Filtration System**

The investigation of the Overseer's Office would give the most answers to the questions that were bouncing around in my head, and may solve some of the outstanding Vault issues.

To that end, I started to make some preparations: first I persuaded Sarah-Jane to agree to limit her clean-up activities to the areas that we have already visited, such as the Maintenance section, Atrium, and around the Secondary Power Room, until I had at least confirmed that the other areas of the Vault, such as Laboratories and the Residential areas were safe.

This proved to be a little harder than I initially expected, I think that Sarah-Jane is taking her responsibilities as Vault Doctor extremely seriously, and is wanting everything to be brought up to pre-war standards. Surprising considering state everything is after 200 years, but it also gave me hope that things could be improved.

Once that was done, I could set mind back to the problem of the Office door; now before that Raider heavy mob had interrupted me, I had worked out that I need some kind of ear-plugs, or Ear Defenders, in order to bypass that sub-sonic command defence on the Overseer's door, so I headed to Secondary Power Room as it was the nearest most likely place to find some.

When I entered the Reactor Room, I couldn't believe my eyes, it was like I had stepped into a full-colour pictures that you see in glossy engineering magazines. The walls & floor were spotless, every piece of metalwork gleamed, and the brass fittings had been polished until they practically shone. To say that Up-N-Atom had been busy would have been a gross under-statement.

As such, I felt that it only fair to praise him, Up-N-Atom responded proudly "Only part of my job", but as he turned away I heard him mutter "After all, there is nothing else to do in here". 'Great' I thought, now I have a bored robot on my hands.

Anyway, I looked in around the Reactor room, and neighbouring store room, but could find no sign of any ear-defenders or ear-plugs, and when I asked Up-N-Atom where they were at.

He replied that 'Jensen from Air Filtration department borrowed them, and has not returned them'.

As the Air Filtration room was just up the corridor from the Reactor, this seemed a good opportunity to check it out, while I retrieved the Ear Defenders. But before I left, I checked the readings on the Reactor.

With the Fuel Rods reprocessed, the Reactor was now up to 27% capacity, and with the power fluctuations mostly gone, the Vault Main-frame been able to instigate "Power Eco mode – Level 5", which basically meant that all lighting was reduced to 75% brightness, and in unoccupied areas, every second light was switched off. Plus all non-essential equipment was either switched off, or forced to operate in their most energy efficient mode, the Reactor could maintain this power level for another 6 months, maybe a year tops, before the output would start falling again fast. Six months! That seemed a lifetime away, I could have laughed, when I read that dire warning, but for the other more urgent worries. At least I knew of a possible refuelling option: the bomb at the centre of Megaton, but for now it could wait for another day.

A closer look at the Vault Power Status log, did highlight that there were a couple of notable exceptions to the Power Eco mode 5: there was still that mystery power drain, that I had noted in the kitchen area, which seemed not included in any of the Eco modes, and the other was a Command Override on the power supplied to the Science Section, issued by order of the Overseer Leris; The odd thing that the Override priority had been set so high, that it even had priority of basic Life Support such as air & water.

I was able to counter the Override partly, due to my official position as Chief Maintenance Engineer, plus the fact that I was standing in the Reactor room itself, with direct access to everything, as a result I set it so that the two Emergency Generators would continue to supply Life Support, regardless of the labs power demand, which should give us time to do something.

As I double-checked, that my modification would work, I spotted an interesting side-point: the Override was time-stamped as June 2109, which means that Leris had been still in the Vault alive 32 years, after the bombs fell. Since the Vault was supposed to have opened after 12 years, why hadn't he left?

With everything in the Reactor checked out, it was time to move onto the Air Filtration System. As I picked my way along the corridor to it, I called up the Maintenance 'To-Do List' on my Pip-boy to see if there were any references to it. Needless to say, there was a very long list of items, but a quick glance seemed to indicate that most of them were fairly minor in nature.

However when I got to the door, I was astounded to find that the room had been locked down, by order of the Overseer, 'due to a dangerous chemical leak', but there was nothing on the 'To Do' list mentioning this. I was able to countermand the lockdown by hacking the local computer terminal, and convincing it that there was a fire inside, and the automatic 'Fire Evacuation' Protocol had precedence over a mere 200 year old 'Chemical Leak Lockdown', and so opened the door.

I quickly cancelled the Fire Alarm, and then stepped into the Air Filtration Room; I was stunned by what I saw, it was like stepping into the Vault-Tec 'Marie Celeste', for I had expected to see the usual wear & tear, or some sign of the chaos that had enveloped the Vault over the past 200 years, but apart from the thin layer of dust over everything, it looked like everyone had just stepped out for 5 minutes, and would be back soon.

Directly facing me was the large Air Filtration System, with numerous flashing 'warning' lights.

To my left, in one corner, was a workbench, with a partly reassembled filter lying on it, with the engineer's tools next to it, all ready for the guy to complete the job when he got back.

In the middle of the room, was a table with the remains of an interrupted poker game laid out, with all the player's cards laid face-down on the table ready to resume, money lying beside each hand of cards, and even the current game's pot lying in the middle of the table.

To my right there was a desk, with an open work log lying on it; it looked like someone had been using the logbook as his personal journal, so I quickly starting looking through it hoping that it would provide some answers. Annoyingly the hand-writing was appalling, but I was able with some patience to decipher some of the entries.

* * *

_**1**__**st**__** October 2077:**_

_Great News, I have been put in charge of the Air Filtration in Vault 106. It means that my family are guaranteed a place in the Vault, no more messing around trying to get onto one of those special short-lists. We are in!_

_**20**__**th**__** October 2077:**_

_What is Dr Leris playing at? He knows that the Vault has been placed on hot-standby, yet he still refuses to assign me a full crew roster. Hell, he designed this whole Air System for Vault-Tec, so he knows darn well I am supposed to have four teams of six, to take care of it properly. And what does he give me - SIX, and two of them are only half-trained apprentices. We have to do 12-hour shifts, with less than a skeleton crew: a team of four to cover the day shift, and a team of two to keep an eye on things overnight, such has dealing with emergencies, but we can't keep this for long. I have submitted a letter of complaint to Vault-Tec Safety Department for this breach in regulations._

_**25**__**th**__** October 2077:**_

_What a nightmare! First the Chinese have gone and dropped The Bomb on us, and now Overseer Leris has told me that I will have to make do with few engineers that I have. He even had the gall to give the excuse that this was because the rest of my team failed to reach the Vault in time. IN TIME! I flagged this up nearly a week ago, why was nothing done then. The Arrogance of the man is unbelievable! _

_He still won't let me recruit any of the Vault Residents to train up myself; my staff are exhausted, and it is all very well, but if the Air System fails, then we will be a worse state than if we lose the Water Chip. You can at least live a few days without water, without air we will literally only have minutes._

_**3**__**rd**__** November 2077:**_

_There is something wrong with the Vault's ventilation system. We are starting to get build-up of Chokedamp in the lower levels, which can only mean that the air is not circulating properly. It is nowhere near dangerous level, but it shouldn't be happening at all. _

_I don't think the air vents are positioned properly, but the Overseer says that he has checked them, and they are all correct._

_It is all very well for him, he doesn't have old Mrs Harris harping on every lunchtime about how her "little Petey has died of a broken heart". I haven't the courage to tell what I think really killed her canary._

_**4**__**th**__** November 2077:**_

_Something strange is going on, one of the security guys came in, saying that the Overseer has circulated saying something along the lines that 'If anyone complains about any funny smells, it is due to some irregularity with Air Filtration System', so I ran a 'Level 1 Diagnostics' and it checks out 100% OK. What is Leris on about?_

_Additional Note: I have had another complaint about Jensen borrowing other's people's equipment, and forgetting to return them. If he weren't my best engineer, I would swear that he was 'missing a few screws upstairs'_

_**17**__**th**__** November2077:**_

_There is something wrong with the Vault's atmosphere, and I do not mean the strange behaviour of a number of the Vault Residents. _

_After dozens of complaints, I did my own in-depth investigation of the Air System, using a customised program of Jensen's, instead of the official approved Vault-Tec software. The system is working 100% as it should, but the 'Air Quality Monitor' is not flagging up that there is an unidentified gas being released into the Vault; it must be sabotage!_

_I have told my whole team, and insisted that we have an emergency meeting with the Overseer tomorrow._

_Here comes another of the Overseer's useless announcements about something or othe... _

__

_

* * *

_

The last entry was incomplete, as if the writer had just dropped his pen and walked out midsentence.

Thanks to these journals, I was starting to get a clear view or timeline of the fall of the Vault from hope to chaos. The date of that last entry seemed strangely familiar, then I realised that Monica Sullivan Journal had an entry for the same date, when the first strange deaths in the Vault occurred: 2 suicides and 3 killed by another crazed resident, who was shot down by security. That seemed more than a mere coincidence, so I checked the BMD records that Sarah-Jane had given me a copy of, and looked up that date, to see if there was any addition information.

I was able to quickly confirm my growing suspicions, all six people who had died on that day had worked in Air Filtration department, and in fact it was the whole department who had perished.

The only logical conclusion that I could draw, was that the Overseer had successfully eliminated the one group of people who had been on the verge of discovering Vault-Tec's secret experiment, and would have been the ones to stop it, such as putting the vents right..

It was noteworthy, that no-one was ever appointed to replace the losses, but rather Air Filtration room was placed on lockdown on the 18th November 2077, the day after the massacre; I presume this was to prevent anyone from learning what the writer of this journal had discovered until it was too late, and to prevent any damage to critical equipment from the coming storm of madness and death.

As these thoughts churned through my mind, I could feel a rage; No! More like THE RAGE, a rage against what Vault-Tec had done, and especially the actions of their local representative Dr Leris. It was a rage so intense, that the Red Madness of the psycho-gas seemed mild in comparison with. I do not recall how long I stood their quivering with almost mindless anger, but not daring to lash out, or even move, for if I did any damage I did in here would condemn us all to a slow suffocating death.

Finally the Rage subsided, leaving me feeling mentally & physically exhausted, my hair and clothes wringing wet with sweat. As I slowly allowed myself to move, I found that I was muttering "Damn them! Damn them all!" no other words seemed adequate to express my feelings. Maybe I could blame those female hormones that were no doubt rushing about my body, for the extreme emotional reactions, but honestly I doubt that my anger would have been the same male or female.

To try and distract myself, and give my body chance to recover I staggered over to Air Filtration's computer terminal, and brought up its status log. The initial summary was extremely worrying: The system was down to 15% of its designed capacity, but this was not a cause for any immediate panic, as the system had been designed as standard practice with a capacity to support double the Vaults designed initial population (I suppose to allow for Residents, plus kids); the more worrying reading was that the system's efficiency was down to 7% and falling, the entire thing would fail within a few days.

Fortunately finding a solution was extremely easy, the declining efficiency was simply due to lack of maintenance, such as blocked filters, ungreased bearings & joints, etc, and just down the corridor I had a maintenance robot with plenty of time on his hands. So, I did a quick check through of the area, including the store-rooms off the corridor, which contained additional spares & materials for the Reactor & Air Filtration system and made sure there were no nasty surprises (e.g. booby-traps) about. Then I popped into the Reactor room, to tell Up-N-Atom the good news that his area of responsibility had been extended. I got a mutter of "What did your last slave die of?" but he was clearly pleased with the news, as he shot up the corridor to Air Filtration, as if his tail was on fire, which I suppose technically it is. Also by time, I had caught up with him; he was busy shooting around the room, cleaning this, oiling that, while at the same time humming what sounded very suspiciously like "Whistle while I work".

With that issue dealt with, it only took me a few minutes to search through the late Jensen's workbench, to find the missing Ear-Defenders, which had the original purpose of the visit.

Before leaving the room, I quickly logged back onto the computer terminal, and ensured that the system was now correctly monitoring the psycho-gas levels, noting that in almost all areas that I had visited so far (and modified the ventilation of), the gas level were down almost to zero; other areas however I red-flagged on my Pip-Boy as unsafe to enter, without protective equipment.

On a plus note, Up-N-Atom's efforts were already starting to produce results with the Air Filtration's efficiency having already increased by 10%, and still rising.

I left the room, feeling really pleased with the progress, when I felt _.?.?.?.. Well, I not quite sure what._.. it seemed like it was well, a shift in reality? Afterwards something seemed slightly different, yet my surroundings seemed unchanged; I ducked quickly ducked into the Reactor, and looked at my reflection in the polished metalwork, I appeared unchanged.

It was only when I checked all my Pip-Boy screens that I spotted some differences, from when I last looked:

Some of my skill levels had changed most noticeable: Melee, Small Guns, Repair, Science and Lock-picking.

The biggest surprise was that I had gained two more Perks: Little Leaguer & Comprehension.

The big personal question was: why had they changed? Was it because of my own actions and experience gained, or some other factor? The changes to my skill levels could be explained as being a result of all the practice I have had in those areas, since I last looked at my Pip-Boy, but I couldn't think of any reasonable or logical explanation of why those Perks were selected.

Still there seemed nothing I could do, but try to carry on the best I could.

I passed Sarah-Jane as I entered the Atrium, as she headed for the Maintenance level to deal with bodies down there. She insisted on giving me a quick check-over, before parting with the warning, that I "had better not have any new injuries next time she saw me, as she would be very annoyed, to say the least.", she also asked if I could do something about the Gun Turret upstairs.

When I got up to the Upper Atrium, I could see what she meant. The Gun Turret was still operational, but it had taken some damage from the fight with the Raider Heavy Mob, and had now developed a worrying habit of tracking everything that moved, while giving disconcerting clicks and puffs of smoke. I switched the Turret to standby mode, to prevent any accidents, and did some basic repairs, so that it would available in an emergency.

Now for the main reason, I was up here, so stepping past some body-bags that Sarah-Jane had left cooling, I put on the Ear-Defenders, and approached the Overseer's office door, once more "_**PLEASE, MOVE AWAY FROM THE DOOR and RETURN TO YOUR QUARTERS**_" boomed out of Vault PA system, but this time they had no effect, and I was able to finally reach the door.

To my surprise, I found that the lock was extremely easy to pick, for I had expected more security than that. I then opened the door & stepped inside...


	14. The Overseer's Office

**Chapter 14 – The Overseer's Office**

The room was in semi-darkness; most of the lights were off, probably to save power, but what I could make out in the gloom looked all very familiar, it had the fairly standard Overseer Office, with the main layout feature being, that the entrance had opened straight into the office area, with a doorway off to the left that presumable lead into the living quarters, and another doorway off to the right, from which shone some flickering lights, maybe from a computer or some other such equipment.

By means of the light shining through the doorway behind me, I could see a Holodisk player lying up against the door frame, it had been roughly wired up to the door's proximity sensor: a quick flick of its power button removed that annoying "Go Away" security measure, enabling me to safely reached up and began to pull off my Ear-Defenders.

I had hardly got them halfway off, before I heard a very familiar clicking sound that made me freeze in mid-movement, as I realised I would have alter my definition of 'safely'.

Correction, there are two sets of clicking noises; on either side of me, and very close too. I moved my head very, very slowly and as little as possible to my left, to try and see what it was out of the corner of my eye; followed by an equally slow glance to my right confirmed my initial worst fears, I was standing in a "kill zone", directly between a pair of Mk V gun turrets, which were pointing right at me.

With little to lose in the attempt, I threw myself desperately to one side, in an attempt to get out of the line of fire, landing painfully on some skeletal remains of a previous victim, and ... and ... Nothing happen!

I rolled gingerly up into a sitting position, astounded that I hadn't been shot to pieces. Only now the room lighting sensors started to belatedly detected my presence, and started to switch on the lights. In the improved visibility, I saw the reason that I was still alive: whomever _(probably Leris)_ had set up this sneaky gun-trap, they had made a fundamental mistake which meant the turrets had caught each other in their own cross-fire, when the last person to try and enter the room had been gunned down. Although the outer casings seemed to largely intact, looks like the damage was enough to prevent them from doing anything other than click in a threatening manner.

Honestly, my main thought, was to thank my lucky stars, that I had used one of my points to increase my luck, as I would hate to think what would have happened otherwise.

As the adrenaline slowly faded in my bloodstream, sharp pain from my hands alerted me to that fact that I hadn't been lucky enough. As I inspected the bloody gashes on my palms, from the rubbish on the floor, my immediate thought was "Sarah-Jane is going to kill me", then the cuts really started to throb, so my thoughts & language were even less appropriate.

I carefully washed clean my cuts, with a bottle of clean water, before dressing them; all the time worrying about the possibility of infection, with all the time & radiation there was no telling what germs & the like were about.

"The only answer is that I must be more careful!" I concluded out loud; then whole ludicrous impossibility of that last thought gave me a fit of the giggles.

After I quickly disconnected both gun-turrets, just to be safe, I turned my attention back to the rest of the room.

Directly facing me on a slightly raised stage was the imposing Overseer's desk, with his chair facing away from me, as if its occupant was surveying the Atrium below. The whole arrangement was clearly intended to impress all who entered, and remind them of their place in the scheme of things.

As I forward, it was apparent that apart the mess next to the entry, and a layer of dust over everything, the place looked much as it must have done, when it was new.

Curiously there seemed to be a series of strange tracks in the dust. They looked like, well small tank tracks, they ran from the entrance, around the Overseer's desk, and up to his chair. There seemed to have been several visits, though the last visit had been some time ago, looking at the level of dust on the clearest and presumably the most recent set of tracks.

I walked round the end of the desk, and got my first clear view of the front of the Overseer's chair, the sight of which caused me to whip my .32 pistol, and have it fully extended ready to shoot, before my brain had chance to fully take in what it was seeing. The chair was still occupied, a wizened old figure in a Vault suit sat there, looking out of the window down into the Atrium, with a curious expression on his face. I was finally face-to-face with the Master-Mind behind all the pain and suffering that saturated this place, the Overseer of Vault 106 himself, Dr Albert Leris.

He was far smaller than I had expected, if he had topped 5-foot I would have been surprised; although it was hard to judge this accurately, due to the strange withered way he was sat in his chair, despite the fact that the dry atmosphere in the room, had perfectly mummified him; so much so, that but for the dust, it looked that he would open his eyes, and say something, if I touched him.

Aggravatingly, it was fairly clear that he had managed to live a very long life, before death had finally caught up with him; this last point now raised an obvious question: Why had his death not been logged by the Vault Computer? He had clearly not left the Vault, but had died here, and as such his Pip-Boy would have automatically reported it.

Plus there was that really creepy expression on his face, which seemed to be a mixture of pain, and awed satisfaction, almost as he had died, at the moment of his greatest triumph. To be honest, it sent chills up & down my spine.

"Okay, now for some answers," I declared, turning my attention to his Pip-Boy, "What the %^$&%!" burst from my lips, as I realised that distraction of Leris's facial expression, had prevented me from noticing the biggest thing that was amiss with the whole scene before me.

Someone or something had almost completely gutted the Overseer's Pip-Boy, and it couldn't have been Leris himself, because to open up a Pip-Boy as thoroughly as this one had, would have taken two free hands, and Leris's left arm was securely duct-taped to the chair-arm.

Also with the Pip-Boy sensor probes still all fully deployed, the operation would have caused extreme pain to the wearer; being dipped in a vat of boiling acid would have seemed minor in comparison.

I crouched down to examine the damage more closely, and something crunched under my foot, it was an empty Med-X syringe, and it was not alone. There was a dozen or more empty syringes lying scattered about under the Overseer's chair; well this partly explained the lack of pain lines on his face.

As regards his Pip-Boy, it looked like the heart of it had been completely removed: its CPU, and all the processing and memory chips. Also there was a strange non-standard data cable that had wired into various exposed points, the other end of which trailed down onto the floor. "What on Earth, was going on here?" I exclaimed, unable think of anything more original to say.

Thwarted for answers there, I now turned to the Overseer's computer terminal for some answers, but I couldn't access it in any way or form. It stubbornly insisted that I had 'insufficient security clearance', and that only personnel with the minimum security level shown in brackets, or higher could access it. A careful comparison of the security level code, with the "Vault Organisation Chart" on my Pip-Boy showed that it applied only those with an 'Overseer' type ranking or higher. My job as Chief Maintenance Engineer meant that I was close, but no cigar; Sarah-Jane as Chief Medical Officer had the same security level as me.

By now, my temper was rapidly starting to rise; All these questions, which kept leading to dead-ends, or just more questions.

I angrily searched through the Overseer's desk, for anything that might help: jerking drawers open, rummaging through them, and then slamming them shut. As I wrenched open the top left-hand drawer, I pulled too hard, and it shot straight out, and landed upside down on the floor spilling its contents everywhere. My furious expletive died in mid-syllable, as I spotted something that was taped to the underside of the drawer. A key-card, and not just any key-card – It was Vault 106 Master Key.

I tore it off its tape mounting in nanoseconds, but was then stumped – now what?. I had not seen any doors or computers that were fitted with the card-reader to take it. It took an embarrassing few minutes for me to realise how dense I was being, missing the obvious: my Pip-Boy, and sure enough, along the bottom edge of it, there was the card-reader.

I swiped the card through, and Pip-Boy beeped, and the screen momentarily blanked out.

Within a minute of the display's return, there was double-beep, as I received an incoming message from the Vault Computer:

_To Chief Engineer Jenny Saunders,_

_Congratulations, on your promotion to "Deputy Vault Overseer" to Vault 106. You now have the honour to serve Vault-Tec, and your fellow residents to an ever greater degree, and for the benefit of humanity._

_Please report to the Overseer's Office, so that you can briefed, as to your duties and Vault responsibilities, by the Vault Overseer._

_Your Pip-Boy files have been updated._

_Signed,_

_Overseer Dr A. Leris_

On reading this, I sardonically turned the room's occupant, and said in my best 'mock' marine style "Sir, Jenny Saunders awaiting instructions! Sir", and then stuck my tongue out at him. Gesture seemed to lighten my mood, as the whole situation was so ridiculous.

This time, when I tried to access the computer terminal, I was able to get straight in, no problem.

The first thing that I was greeted with was a personal message of the Vault Main-Frame, informing me that "The Overseer was currently in Science Lab 1, engaged in an important experiment, and could not be disturbed", it then suggested that in the meantime I read the Vault-Tec Company Hand-book, which had been downloaded onto my Pip-Boy.

A quick scan of that, revealed that it was typical Management-speak document, full of inspiring phrases, but with very little information that would have been useful 200 years ago, but was total waste of time now.

However, message content did raise one strange question: Why did the Vault Main-frame think that the Overseer was in the Science Lab? Surely even if it didn't know he was dead, it would have known that his body was physically here in his office.

I tried to investigate further, however the feeling of triumph accessing the computer died very quickly, as I was greeted with hundreds (maybe thousands of files: many of them being the official generic Vault-Tec instructions, which provided very little useful information.

Annoyingly the file with the title "Overseer – Instructions" empty, and all the data files from all the whole Vault experiment was gone: the folders were still there, but the contents were missing. According to the computer's history log, a large number of files had been transferred on the 15th June 2112, to the Science Lab computer server, moreover when I tried to access that system, the terminal reported that the "Network Connection is broken". A quick comparison of the Maintenance Records, confirmed that the network link had been broken only a few minutes after the transfer of the data files had been completed.

Fortunately, whoever had taken the files, had not been as diligent enough, as I managed to find an old data backup, which contained what appeared to be Overseer Leris's Journal/Log. The file had been badly corrupted in sections, but what entries survived made fascinating reading:

* * *

_**?**__**th**__** July 2075**_

_Finally, the pencil-pushers have finally got round to assigning personnel to the new Vaults, but why do they insist in such messages being hand-delivered, and signed for. Don't they realise how much this disrupts my experiments. My research is of vital importance; it is critical to discover how various chemical nerve & mutantgenic gas agents that may be encountered on a battlefield will interact with each other. Still, there is a the plus side, the dramatic demise of that impertinent office-boy who brought the message to me, has a number of my colleagues very excited; I was certainly impressed at speed that he started to bulk-up, and turn purple with intense rage before he was even halfway across the room, it is a shame that his brain imploded, before we could get him onto the examination table. His body was whisked away almost immediately for autopsy. This needs further study. _

_**15**__**th**__** October 2077**_

_Damn those Chinese, and Double-Damn those panicking rubber-stampers at Vault-Tec. They have insisted that the Vaults be brought up to Hot-Standby, which means I have to waste my invaluable time sitting at my desk, just when my experiments with the psycho-active gas_ [name unreadible]_ were showing signs of real promise. If used in under the right conditions, it would make even the most co-ordinated of armies to tear themselves apart, or with some other means of control, we could create the ultimate in Assault Troops – the Berserker; Perfect for storming enemy strongholds._

_Also there are these stupid secret instructions, some of which I am not allowed to open until the Vault door has been sealed. I have no time to waste with these silly spy games._

_**23**__**rd**__** October 2077**_

_Wonderful news! Now that Vault door has been sealed, I have finally been able to open those secret instructions, and ... I couldn't believe my eyes, Vault-Tec have agreed fully to my request for a full-blown test of my new neurological gas, and they have even equipped this Vault with everything I need. Now it all makes marvellous sense: the selection of my team of top-flight researchers, and that the Vault was assigned the most co-operative & passive of Vault-Tec staff, and other like-minded Residents; perfect for me to use as subjects._

_**26**__**th**__** October 2077**_

_Those damned Penny-pinchers in Vault-Tec supply. The Vault Radio is a load of junk, my own civilian kit is vastly more superior to this trash, Hell! I gave my 5-year old nephew a better radio than this, for his birthday last year._

_The Communication link with Vault-Tec Central is still not working, even with my equipment: the data-transmission up-link seems to be working, but there is no feedback response. _

_I have compiled a full Complaint Report, which I will submit, as soon as I get through._

_The good news is that I have managed to establish a local comm-net, with the nearby Vaults in the area. Most of them have admitted, or as good as, that they also have no communication with anyone outside of the area._

_Conversation beyond that varies from Vault to Vault: _

_Overseer Almodover of Vault 101 is still refusing to talk much, citing Vault-Tec instructions. I can only assume that he must also have had some secret additional instructions, as there is nothing that I am aware of, against us communicating._

_Dr Braun in Vault 112 was positively rude, and has refused to talk to me in person, except some child he has manning their radio. He keeps threatening to report me to Vault-Tec Central. I have heard nothing since, so it must have been an empty threat._

_Communication with Overseer _[name illegible] _in Vault 87 is difficult, from what I can make out, it sounds like that they took a direct hit. The Vault itself is OK, but the door is jammed. The Vault's external radio masts have been badly damaged or destroyed, plus the high levels of radiation in the area is making communication patchy at best._

_Overseer David Wilson (Call Me 'Dave') in Vault 108 seems to be a fairly pleasant chap, although he seems to be excessively proud of his status as Vault Overseer._

_My good friend Richard Rubin is the Overseer up north in Vault 92; it seems that he is working on something similar to me, but using sonic control instead. He gave me some very useful suggestions for controlling troublesome Residents, which I may be able to modify the PA system to broadcast. Just to be safe, I will keep the control commands simple, a variation of dog training commands of "Come" and "Go to Bed"._

_**2**__**nd**__** November 2077 – Day 1 of the Great Experiment**_

_All the gas cylinders are online, and are responding to my commands, and I have gas monitors located all round the Vault, and the modification to the PA system is done. I have even prepped key personnel with the cover story, that there is "a irregularity with Air Purification System". The only 'fly in the ointment' is that blasted Williamson, always harping on about not having enough staff to operate the Air Purification; He may be a problem, which I may need to eliminate. Nothing must interfere with this experiment!_

_**Day 3:**_

_There are indications that the gas is starting to have an effect on the Residents; Security has reported that there are indications of rising irritability, and they had to break up a scuffle in the Cafeteria Lunch queue today. I told them that it was probably just 'Cabin Fever', and that people would adjust._

_Williamson is definitely going to be a problem, he seems to be taking the suggestion that the gas is due to a fault with his equipment as a personal insult. It could be due to his exposure to the gas, but I have started 'Project: Masada" just in case. Luckily Jenson, one of Williamson's crew seems to be exceptionally susceptible to my Sonic commands, so I trying some of Richard's suggestions of more advanced command words._

_**Day 10:**_

_Things are proceeding nicely, the gas has completely destroyed the happy, co-operative, friendly atmosphere of the Vault; Residents are viewing each other with suspicious looks. Note: As an interesting side-effect is the sudden rise in gang-orientated behaviour, with Residents forming protective cliques, usually based around their immediate work-associates. There is aggressive behaviour within the groups, but the majority of the hostility is directed towards non-members of the group._

_One unfortunate side-effect of the experiment: is that work quality of my Research Team has been reduced by their exposure to the gas, and one of them got a nasty black-eye & cut lip in latest brawl whilst on-route to Lab 1. So I have decided to declare the Upper Atrium off-limits to all but my Research Team, and I am having to limiting the Team's access to the Laboratory area to periods when the gas levels there are at their lowest, and there is little activity in the Atrium._

_I added "Fetch" to my list of Sonic Commands to ensure that the supplies to my office are not affected by the experiment._

_**Day 15:**_

_The experiment is steadily moving into its next phase, now that gas levels are now at level 2 in most of the lower areas of the Vault. Project Masada was a complete success, and all I need to do now, is to neglect to appoint any replacement staff to the Air Purification Department; no-one will notice in the confusion._

_I also successfully defused a potential crisis among my Research Team; Dr Sullivan was trying to rally some kind of revolt, which would have interfered with MY experiment. However I was able to stop the whole thing in its tracks, thanks to the PA sonic commands, although Dr Sullivan seems to be somehow immune to its effect. I must contact Vault 92, and discuss this with Richard. _

_**Day 20:**_

_The whole outcome of the experiment is in danger. That so-called top-flight team of Researchers, BAAAHH!, I would have done better with a bunch of bird-watchers, at least they would know better than draw attention to themselves. But NOO! One of them just had to take a photo with a camera, equipped with a FLASH! Next thing you know, the Residents are running amok on the Upper Atrium. As far as I can tell, only that mutinous Dr Sullivan survived._

_I will continue the experiment, but it will be much harder for me to process all the data alone. I will have to automate it somehow. Also as a result in the fighting yesterday, I have only 30% of the test subjects I estimate that I will need to complete the bare minimum of my research._

_There must be some way to solve this dilemma? I cannot fail this early in my testing!_

_**Day 22:**_

_Marvellous! Wonderful! Only the other day, I was staring possible failure in the face, only for the solution to literally come knocking on my door today._

_After the loss of useless bunch of so-called scientist, I was forced to review the whole experiment, and the data gather so far, and I realised that whole setup of the experiment was based on a fallaciously. The aim is develop the gas as a weapon, as well as a creating the next-generation of Assault Troops, by means of live testing in the real world. But the Vault's very isolation means that that it is just a lab test writ-large-scale; in the real world, there are always additional people interacting with those affected by the experiment, be that friends, family, or person-next-door._

_The solution is simple, let people in from outside, in a controlled rate, and record what happens. I already have my first group of additional subjects outside the door right now, a mixed bunch of National Guardsmen and Nurses from Germantown. Some of them look to be in a pretty rough state, a couple almost look like they are glowing, but as first batch, they are perfect._

_I will allow them in, once I have secured my office, and the Laboratory sector from possible intrusion._

_**11 months, 4 days:**_

_The Experiment is proceeding well, as expected the majority of test subjects introduced into the Vault, are quickly attacked, and wiped out by the existing Vault Residents. However, there is an interesting side-effect: any new subjects that survive the initial introduction to the Vault are quickly absorbed into one or other of the Resident 'Gangs', to the extent that they become indistinguishable from the original test subjects in their dress, speech and behaviour._

_It will be interesting to see how this develops._

_**1 year, 7 months:**_

_It has now been several months or more since I last managed to contact anyone outside of the Vault:_

_I fear the worst for my friend Richard Rubin in Vault 92, as last reports sounded like he was having some crowd control problems; I did warn him that I thought he was making his control commands too complicated. It is often best to keep things simple _

_Dr Peterson became Acting Overseer at Vault 108, for awhile after David Wilson suddenly died, and I used to enjoy my chats with her. However when I now try contacting her, all I get back is a strange demented male chorus of "Dave, Dave, Dave". Have they all gone mad over there?_

_All intelligent communication with Vault 87 has been lost. Now all I get from there is grunts & manic yelling, with the occasional comment about "Hearing Voices"._

_Vaults 101 & 112 are still registering on the network, but are stubbornly refusing to respond to my calls._

_Still no contact with Vault-Tec Central. I will be reporting this incompetence to CEO of Vault-Tec himself. How on Earth, am I supposed to ensure that invaluable research data is getting processed properly without some kind of feedback!_

_**6 years, 1 month:**_

_The Vault population seems to have stabilised at approximately 40 Residents, allowing for minor variation due to the controlled introduction of new subjects: only seven left from my original set of test subjects. Interesting the basic biological need to reproduce seems to be resistant to the gas effects, Senior Engineer Jeff Saunders has had a son, and its parents are protecting it from the rest of the group; Fascinating!_

_The number & frequency of fresh test subjects seems be falling; this could threaten the continuation of my work. I am doing some modifications to the kitchen's Mr Handy robot, so that I can send it out as a Recon Drone, to find out what the conditions are like outside. _

_**6 years, 2 month, 22 days:**_

_Have finally finished studying the remains of the strange robot, which my Recon Drone found, down near the bridge. I believe it is RobCo prototype, a kind of mobile camera robot. It has been configured as a purpose-built armed Recon Drone / News Broadcast Unit, unfortunately it has been too badly damaged for me to repair completely, however I may be able to get it working, if I graft it into the Mr Handy robot._

_Then maybe I can use it to broadcast old Vault-Tec advertisements, and the like to encourage more test subjects to the Vault._

_**12 years, 4 months:**_

_Where are they? The whole experiment was supposed to have finished last month, after which the Vault should either have opened, so that everyone can leave, the radiation permitting of course. But if the radiation is too high, as is the case, then a Vault-Tec vertibird is supposed to collect me and my research, and transport me to Vault-Tec Central, wherever it is located, for further development._

_Maybe they having maintenance issues? I will just have to be patient; I had intended to fully terminate the experiment, but I will postpone that until my transport arrives. Additional data is always helpful_

_**25 years, 1 month:**_

_Today is a kind of landmark day, as the last of the original Vault Residents has died. The Vault population of sixty subjects; which now consists wholly of introduced subjects, plus about a dozen second and third generation residents. Strangely only the 'Attack' & 'Go to Bed' commands seem to work anymore, all other commands such as the 'Fetch' are ineffective, as they mostly only worked with the original subjects, and some of the early introduced groups. If it wasn't for "Testy" bringing me fresh supplies, I would have been forced to leave my quarters, damaging the integrity of my experiment _

_I am still amazed that the urge to procreate can overcome the effects of my gas. It is interesting to see if there is any change in tolerance to the gas in the subsequent generations._

_**31 years, 6 months:**_

_What a depressing day! It is supposed to be my 80__th__ Birthday today, a day of celebration, but thanks to goddamned Vault-Tec pencil-pushers and their empty promises, I am trapped in this dingy rat-hole._

_They were supposed to get me out of here 20 years ago, but instead all I have heard is silence and now things are starting to fall apart. Power is starting to become a critical issue; the Geo-Thermal plant has gone off-line, and the Nuclear Reactor is producing way below what it is supposed to, and I cannot contact those damned unreliable Mr Handy robots, that are meant to deal with this._

_**31 years, 6 months, 4 days.**_

_Testy has just brought me the results of my latest medical, and they confirm what I feared; I have some kind of progressive nerve degeneration disease; hopefully a combination of Med-X & Buffout will slow it down. _

_But unless someone comes soon, I will die in here, and my life's work will be lost._

_That cannot be allowed to happen! There must be some alternative!_

_**32 years, 9 months 2 days**_

_Oh the Pain!, it is almost constant now, I only have the limited mobility in my right arm remaining to me now. Nothing seems able to stop it._

_But I think that I may have a solution. If this hypothesis of Professor Calvert, from this old science journal is correct, I may be able to make the old jokes about robots like Testy a reality, and grant me immortality._

_Now where is that RobCo manual? _

_**34 years, 8 months, ?days**_

_No more time, if this blasted Pip-Boy is to be believed. The Transfer must be done today. I have only a matter of hours left, before the degeneration reaches the point of no return. It is now or never. The irony is that if this fails my life's work will be lost, yet if this succeeds, this will my crowning achievement, making my work obsolete. June 14__th__ 2112 – The day I conquered death!_

_**++ 15**__**TH**__** JUNE 2112 ++**_

_++ LERIS UPLOAD COMPLETE ++_

_++ 5% DATA CORRUPTION DETECTED – ATTEMPTING FILE REPAIR ++_

_++ REPAIR COMPLETE – INITATING COMMAND PROTOCOL: LERIS ++_

_++ PRIMARY MISSION: CONTINUE VAULT-TEC EXPERIMENT 106 ++_

_++ SECONDARY MISSION: PRESRVE EXPERIMENT 106 DATA ++_

_++ PRESENT LOCATION: INSECURE & SURPLUS TO REQUIREMENTS ++_

_++ TRANSFERRING ALL EXPERIMENTAL DATA TO A SECURE AREA ++_

_++ DATA TRANSFER COMPLETE. ISOLATING SECURE AREA ++_

_++ SHUTTING DOWN CURRENT LOCATION, AND MOVING TO SECURE AREA ++_

* * *

I sat staring at the screen, trying to absorb what I had just read. This thrice-damned gas experiment was bad enough, but it looked like one behind it all may still be around somewhere.


	15. Discovery about Self News from Outside

**Chapter 15 – Discoveries about Self, and News of the Outside**

Before moving away from the computer, I did a quick data search to investigate a couple of the points about Leris's journal

The first thing was that I was curious try and work out if there had been any interaction with the Vault Main-frame, after 15th June 2112. To my surprise there was very little sign of anything that I could link directly to Leris; there was a number of failed attempts to access the system, probably from newly arrived residents, but these attempts were rarely repeated by the same person. The only significant exception was a bunch of attempts that were all done by the same individual (log-on name: "Ler?%sty" over a number of years. Had Leris's dream hit a problem? For now, I could only hope so.

Other item was that Leris had mentioned a Maintenance Engineer called Jeff Saunders, as well as other Residents having kids. Despite Leris have removed his research data, there were still enough surviving Vault records, to confirm that I, or rather my character was a direct descendant of the original Vault Residents.

As I leant back to consider that point….

_Suddenly I was … somewhere else in the Vault …. There was a huge man in a blue Vault-suit, towering over me smiling… he gave me this enormous baseball bat mentioning something about my birthday, then dragging me over to far corner of the room to "Try it out", there lying on the floor bleeding, was this stranger in peculiar clothes…. the man starting yelling at me to "Hit it! Kill it!"… the air went strangely misty, and I felt roaring rage surge through me, a red mist descended… I raised the bat, and …_

The next thing, I was lying in a pool of sweat on the floor of the Overseer's office, having fallen from my seat.

"A bloody Flash-back", I gasped out loud. My initial thought, was that it had been a one-off traumatic memory, but as I tried to analyse it in my mind, there didn't seem to be any horror, or shock attached to the event, if anything all the mental attachments to indicated that it was classed as….well…. a …happy?... memory; the only horror I could find, was from my old male personality, but this new me treasured it

What was worse though, was that I near certain, there hadn't been any such memories lurking in the back of my brain, but this newly recalled flashback memory seemed to have all sorts of links to other feelings and possible other similar memories.

Then it hit me, in the Fallout 3 game, at Lone Wanderer's 10th birthday, there had been a trip down to the reactor room to learn how to shoot radroaches; I had just suffered a flashback of Vault 106's version of the event – learning to kill outsiders.

It now seems that my mind was starting to alter, to match the physical change that resulted from my arrival here.

I dragged myself to my feet, and lurched into the Overseer's bathroom and prompted emptied the contents into the toilet bowl, finally I staggered to the sink, to wash my mouth out, and to splash cold water on my face, to try and clear my mind, but into the mirror over the sink, the white face that peered back at me, which had started to appear familiar, now only looked like a terrified stranger's.

I gave a desperate mental prayer to whatever deity who would be willing to listen, that somehow the part of my mind, that made me Me! would survive.

After some time, and a number of repeated submersions of face into the overflowing sink, my brain finally seemed to fully come back online enough for me to resume my investigations.

A brief examination of the Leris's living quarters revealed little, with few if any true personal items about, he seemed to have only used the room for sleeping in and that's was it.

The last remaining room to investigate was the one off to the left of the Overseer's Office, stepping into the room it was Vault's communication centre. The first thing that struck me was that almost half of the original equipment, and been stripped out and piled in a corner …. Correction, make that thrown in a heap in the corner. In their place, and been equipment that was cleared not marked as being standard Vault-Tec issue, but of a much higher quality, a quick glance around the room, plus some of Leris's comments in his journal, provided the answer. Hard though it may seem, this mass-murderer had a hobby, he had been a radio-ham enthusiast.

The bonus for me, however was that I had a much equipment for hearing from, and contacting the outside world, than the designers of this vault had intended.

A quick check over and everything looked Okay, so I reached out for the 'On' button, and …. Missed - Odd!. I tried again, and again missed, "What the Hell!", I exclaimed out loud. This time I slowly reached my arm out for the button, and as my finger approached the button, my hand began to shake, and I was hit with an overwhelming urge NOT to switch the radio on.

I re-checked & double-checked everything: the equipment was in very good condition considering its age, there was no booby traps, nothing to prevent me from switching it on; all except for this overwhelming fear that I mustn't. Then it occurred to me what it was: the other possible effect of Leris's damned psycho-gas – Fear. I hadn't noticed it before, because I was normally dealing with the Red Madness, but now these new memories had started to appear, I was getting the full Vault Resident mind-set, which obviously included a Fear…a phobia? …. of anything from outside the Vault!...

I not sure exactly what, maybe I could discuss with Sarah-Jane, since she had more medical knowledge than me. But this Fear certainly explained why no-one tried to leave, even those who knew what life was really like out there.

I stared that red power button, as it glowed back me, as if it was daring me to press it. My original male mind fought with the Fear, trying to overcome, when suddenly it got help from an unexpected quarter. The Red Madness, which had been lurking at the back of my mind joined the fray and combined, I was able to throw my fist at that taunting button, hitting it squarely dead centre.

By time the pain in my hand had subsided down a manageable level, the Communication Centre had powered up, done automatic scan of the airwaves for all available stations, and had lit points on the frequency dial, where it had found a radio signal.

The lights mostly lined up with some faded hand-written labels that Leris must have affixed to it, nearly 200 years ago.

As I reached for the dial, I noticed that all physical resistance to my actions, had ended, however in inside my head, I could feel that my mind was divided, with one half desperately wanting for me 'to leap from my seat, and flee from the room, never to return', while the other half equally desperate for 'any kind of news of the outside world', and between the two lurked the "Red Madness" eager for mental mindless violence to commence. I could feel my sanity teetering on the edge of the precipice, and all I could do is carry on, and hope for the best.

The first station available was one that didn't have a label, and annoyingly while the carrier wave was strong, the transmission quality was poor. The few word fragments that I could decipher sounded like "…NCR..", "..Legion…" and "… the Dam…."

Now the rumours that I had heard of the upcoming "Fallout New Vegas", before I had ended up here, had said that it was set a few years from now, however the events that led up to that game, included the First Battle for Hoover Dam which should be occurring about now; certainly those faint fragments sounded about right. But as regards the Capital Wasteland, Nevada might as well be on the dark side of the moon.

The next station was playing martial music, which was then followed by the familiar voice of President Eden nostalgically recounting a Yao Guai hunting trip in his younger days, where unable to find an adult, he had been offered a cub to shoot instead. That tale sounded suspiciously similar to the one about Teddy Roosevelt, and how toy bears got to be called Teddy Bears.

Leris's label for the Enclave's station said "US Government – Emergency Broadcast", which explains why a lot of the radios littering the wasteland are tuned to it; owners vainly listening for life-saving advice.

The next set of stations & labels belonged to the local radio network, that Leris had established with the neighbouring Vaults. Unsurprisingly only Vaults 101 & 112 were still broadcasting anything: 112 was sending a strong carrier-wave, but nothing else, while 101 was faintly broadcasting its internal Vault PA system, it sounded like someone had left his microphone on, rather than an intentional broadcast. From what I could make out it sounded like Amata's revolt was still in its infancy, as the Overseer was still ordering everyone to remain in their rooms due to the radroaches, and that the continuing disobedience will be dealt with harshly, in due time

The next station, was the one I had been looking forward to: GNR. The crazy mad voice of Three Dog rolled out of the radio, and bounced around the walls despite the distortion and weakness in his radio signal.

It took only a few minutes of listening to him, compared to President Eden's broadcast, for me to decide who I would have most confidence in trusting. It was like that crazy uncle (or aunt) that most families seem to have, who is both maddening & funny at the same time, but you know deep down, that they do care about you, compared that dodgy second-hand car salesman, or politician who promise the moon, but they have to deliver, refer you to the small print, or claim 'Act of God' as to why they can't.

It was interesting to see how well constructed GNR broadcast was, it was not as random as it seemed in the game. Three Dog broadcasted a news report roughly on the hour, repeating any old, but current news, with any updates there may have been, followed by a kind of weather forecast. The forecast that I caught warned that heavy black clouds had been seen, to the North-west, so people were warned to be careful when near, or in the Potomac river-bed, as there was a possibility of flash floods.

In between the news broadcasts, was a mixture of music, an episode of "Adventures of Herbert 'Daring' Dashwood" – it was the one were Dashwood & Argyll meet for the first time, and Three Dog's personal Survival tips.

I listened for quite some time, long enough to catch two of Three Dog's news reports, taking care note of the key news items, which were:

Reports of two crazies in weird costumes fighting it out daily in Canterbury Commons

That traders reported no sign of life at Greyditch

Warning that while Raider activity had fallen in some areas _(Maybe the recent Pied Piper message was a factor, I mused)_, it wasn't true everywhere, and that Fairfax had fallen to the Raiders, although there were vague reports that the Outcasts still held their end of the town.

An alert: there are sightings of increased numbers of Super Mutants, in the area of The Mall, especially near the Capitol Building.

Three Dog passed some rye remarks, that not only had someone had left Vault 101, the first in almost twenty years, but that another had come out shortly after.

News Flash: The bomb in the centre of Megaton had finally been defused, by the most recent escapee from Vault 101, who now had an open invite to visit GNR, to "Fix Three Dog's Toaster"

Strangely the getting of a clearer picture of conditions seemed to resolve or at least deaden my mental/emotional internal conflict, leaving a desire to see what things were really like for myself. But of course before I could do that I needed a complete picture of conditions within the Vault, and to clear up, or at least identify any lose ends.


	16. The Pied Piper

**Chapter 16: The Pied-Piper**

Finally I switched the radio off, , and got out of my seat, and "Ohh!", Boy was I stiff, I needed to moving, and burn off some energy: Go and shoot someone…. No, Correction! Go hit something….. No! Scrub that, Go do something positive. Yeah that's more like it.

That sounded better, although in this universe, and especially in here, "something positive" would mostly likely involve shooting or hitting something.

Smiling slightly, at my black humour, I wandered back through the office and out onto the Upper Atrium, and... stopped dead in my tracks, something was wrong, different somehow. Basically, everything looked, ... well shabby, for want of a better word.

It took a couple of minutes for me to twig what it was, the Vault hadn't magically transformed changed, while I was in the office; however the air had. With the Air Filtration System now working properly, after it's long overdue service, and with a large number of its vents now properly positioned, it had not only removed the ever-present trace of the psycho-gas, but also all the dust, smoke, and other muck, that had been suspended normally in the air, and now for the first time, I could see everything clearly.

Sadly, that just emphasised just how bad a state, the Vault was in. It would take a lot of work: cleaning and repairing, to get it back up to what I felt would be an acceptable standard.

Once down on the Lower Atrium, I was greeted by a tired, but satisfied Sarah-Jane "That's the job done for now", she proudly declared, "I have cleared all the bodies, and stuff up, and sorted all usable clothes, weapons, and whatever in to boxes that are in the first room on the left, down there" she concluded, gesturing over her shoulder to the door that led to the Maintenance wing, and our quarters. "How's your day been?"

After dropping my heavy rucksack & Assault rifle down, I then proceeded to relate what I had discovered in the Overseer's Office, plus the news that I had been promoted to Deputy Overseer.

However before Sarah-Jane, could give a response positive or negative to the news; There was a loud clatter from the direction of the Vault Entrance.

Almost without thinking, I was off and running to see what it was, with Sarah-Jane close on my heels. Just short of the Vault Entrance, I flattened myself against the wall, gestured to Sarah-Jane to do likewise, while with my other hand, I drew my trusty .32 pistol. Slowly sidling up to the doorway, I cautiously peered round it into the room.

The first thought to flash through my mind was "Wow! Robot gone Bad!"; for there buzzing backwards & forwards between the Main Vault Door, and its control station, burbling away to itself, was the strangest looking Mr Handy robot, that I had ever seen.

It had to be the Pied-Piper, because it matched the Sarah-Jane's description of a cross between a Mr Handy, and an Eyebot. It had rough body shape, and arms of a Mr Handy, but an Eybot's front grill, and its array of aerials, although unlike a standard Eyebot layout, the aerials instead of pointing rearward, the Pied-Piper's aerials were sticking out in all directions, giving the robot a definite Punk style look. Also at some point over the years, it had received at least one Raider make-over, with the multi-coloured graffiti adding to its 'Bad-Boy' look. Worryingly, it had a very familiar gas cylinder strapped to its back.

However, this was my chance to eliminate this hazard to the humanity. I slipped as stealthily as possible, into the room; I would only get one free shot, and it must be a good clean one, because with that gas tank, the odds of me getting gassed were dangerously high, even without the risk of rupturing the tank myself.

I took aim, and ... ZAPPP! ...

The unexpected jolt threw me hard back against the wall, and down behind a control panel, while my gun flew out my paralysed hand, and skittled across the floor, before dropping through a floor grating.

"Damn!", I yelped, I had made the mistake, of only watching the arms that held the buzz-saw, and Flamethrower attachments, for any hostile movements, and had missed spotting that the Pied-Piper was also fitted Eyebot's Zapper, which had been mounted like a rear turret, just to catch potential ambushers, like me.

Upon reaching back behind myself, for another weapon, I let burst another vile expletive, as my left hand scrabbled at fresh air. Of all the stupid, green-horn mistakes, that I could have done, and it had to be this one. In my haste to investigate, I had gone left my rucksack, with all my other weapons back in the Atrium, and with my whole right arm still out of action thanks to that Zapper, my chances barehanded against this metal opponent were about nil.

I pressed my back hard against the control panel, while I looked round desperately for a weapon, any kind of weapon!, all the while, conscious that the Pied-Piper was slowly moving around, with the intention of finishing me off, from a safe distance beyond arms reach.

"Excuse me...", my head shot round at the surprise sound of Sarah-Jane's voice, and my eyes bulged in shock, for she was standing just inside the room, wearing only her underclothes. The remains of my male side acknowledged that she looked pretty good (Okay, OKAY! she looked great!), and even the female side of this body seemed to agreed, with a small pang of jealousy.

While Sarah-Jane's unexpected appearance had made my stream of thoughts jump a gear or two; it must have popped a couple of the Pied-Piper's circuits, for it genuinely didn't seem to know how to react to this new situation.

It started to drift in her direction, all the while its weapons flipped back & forth between her, and my hiding place, while it tried to analyse what to do.

"Excuse me!" She repeated nervously, "But could you tell me, if there is somewhere safe to shelter around here?"

Those words seemed to resolve the Pied-piper's dilemma, for it immediately began to broadcast, what sounded like an ancient pre-war Vault-Tec advertisement, it was hard to be totally sure, as most of the recording had become distorted with age, and repeated wear & tear, but "Bacon & Eggs" & "Reserve a place in a Vault", could be heard. The recording ended with Leris's voice declaring that there were still a few vacancies in Vault 106, but that "you must hurry, as these are only available, on a 'First Come, First Serve' basis", and although I couldn't be sure, but I thought I heard a faint buzz, that hinted that there may be some Ultra-Sonics backing up what he said.

Sarah-Jane seemed to listen attentively, and then ducked back out of sight, through the doorway; just she did so, as my hand found something. A screwdriver, Okay, not an ideal weapon, but better than nothing.

As I shifted my position slightly so as to be ready to move, I made a slight scuffle sound, but it was enough to remind the Pied-piper, that there was some unfinished business to hand.

It swung rapidly around the end of control panel, to get that clear shot at me, but thanks to Sarah's momentary distraction, it had moved much closer to my hiding place, than it had originally intended, such that it passed right above me.

Lunged upwards, I drove the screwdriver with all the strength that my legs, and arm could provide upwards, ramming it through a crack in the Pied-Piper's hodgepodge armour. It froze transfixed; there was a flash, several bangs, and smoke billowed out of every orifice, and an electrical jot zapped down my arm, and then it went dead.

My triumphant cry of "Yyyeee...", was cut short, as the now suddenly 'lump of dead-weight metal' made like a stone, and dropped, right onto my still rising head & body.

* * *

This time, I didn't even have to open my eyes before I regretted regaining consciousness. Fallout had been one of my favourite games, but now having to 'live the life' I was rapidly down-grading that opinion.

"Time to get, Mr Deputy Overseer", an angry voice, now boomed into my aching brain. I painfully opened my eyes, to see Sarah-Jane standing over me, her facial expressions constantly shifting between professional concern, and righteous indignation.

"Ohhh!, Can't you give something for my head? A Stimpack, or something" I moaned, wincing as every word seemed to threaten to split my head in two.

"Now I warned you, what I would do to you, if I saw you in here again so soon!", she retorted, though her words were contradicted, by her concerned expression, as she waved, what I presumed was some kind of scanner, over my head, while at same time cross-check the readings, with what she was uploading from my Pip-Boy.

"Besides, I have already told you, that Stimpacks don't really work on bruises, and that's basically what your thick head is now. One BIG bruise!" She continued, as she clearly relaxed slightly, obviously happy with what the scanner was telling her. "I can't use Med-X, as that can conceal evidence of brain damage. Any other pre-war pain-killers that may have been stocked in here, have either been used up, or otherwise lost. Plus I don't have access to any of the usual plants & fungus, that we normally use outside in the Wasteland"

"Plants & Fungus?" my curiosity momentarily overcoming the pain "Yeah, most scavengers look for them, when they're out & about, as a good way to earn caps. I hear that Moira Brown has a few of them on contract looking for new specimens, which could be useful."

"Sounds familiar", I muttered, as I slumped back on the bed.

"Oh No! You don't! UP", Sarah-Jane interrupted my collapse, "You're not sleeping here! You have your own bed to go to. So UP you get, and get going. Get a shower and some sleep, I have put some food in your quarters, and I don't want to see you outside your room for the next 24 hours."

"What?" I sat up almost too quickly for my own good, in my surprise at her words.

"You're grounded" she explained in her strict no-messing doctor's manner, "Do you know just how stressed out & exhausted you are? Well I do. Okay, living in this madhouse of a Vault, would be stressful for anyone. But your Pip-Boy has shows that for past week or so, your stress levels have been going through the roof"

"But, I haven't been wearing it that long", I protested, as she near bodily dragged me, to my feet, and ushered me towards the door.

"The Pip-Boys are cleverer than you think. They can analyse your body, almost right down a cellular level, so they can determine your medical history. And you are fit to drop", Sarah-Jane chivvied me up the stairs, and into my quarters "And while it is your job, Mr Deputy Overseer to care for this Vault & it's occupants; it is my job to ensure that you stay fit & healthy to do that."

And with that, she turned, stepped back into the corridor, and very firmly closed the door behind her.

I stared bewildered after her for a few moments, then burst into a fit of laughter, as crazy/funny side of what had just happened. It was just so ridiculous.

My sore head, very quickly brought my laughter to an end, but I did feel a lot better. I always said that I had a 'cracked' sense of humour, and it was kind of comforting to know, that it was still with me, even here.

To honest, by this point, Sarah-Jane's suggestion of shower & bed, sounded really good, and looking at the state of my Vault-suit, a set of clean clothes wouldn't go amiss either.

The hot relaxing shower did its work, so effectively, that I barely managed to reach my bed, before collapsing sound asleep.

* * *

I don't know if it was my head injury, my mental exhaustion, or whether Sarah-Jane had slipped me something, but somehow I managed to sleep 16 hours straight.

Which meant that, combined with the removal of psycho-gas, my mind was clearer than it had ever been, since I arrived here.

After I got dressed, and checked my door. I now had to consider my situation, which didn't include a large range of options. Sarah-Jane hsdn't been joking with her 'you're grounded' threat. I was sealed in my quarters, as she had initiated a medical lock-down on my door, which even I couldn't override. I was stuck here, for the time being at least.

"Getting stuck in locked places, seems to be my speciality", I mused, half-humorously to myself.

However on the plus side, on my room's table, there were several crates, plus my rucksack, all of which I was fairly sure hadn't been there last night.

These contained:

A few food items, some of which I had breakfast (Fresh food supplies are definitely a priority).

A mixed selection of salvaged equipment, mainly firearms & armour.

A selection broken medical equipment

A large note on the crates, said:

"_Work is supposed to therapeutic! And if any more of my equipment fails, I won't be able to put you back together again. _

_Priority: please get the 'Head-Scan' unit working a.s.a.p. Especially as you seemed determined bash your brains into new & interesting shapes._

_Sarah-Jane"_

I had to give a wry smile at that last jibe, as it did seem all too true, besides her suggestion was very valid.

So far, I had been lucky, but luck has the nasty habit of running out. Better I spend some time investing in some protection & insurance for the future now, than leaving it until I am either very dead, or at best in a load of pain.

It was surprising how quickly the time seemed to fly by, as I worked. Most of the medical equipment just needed a good service, and minor repairs (broken wires re-soldered, etc), the few exceptions I was able to repair by cannibalising others.

So hopefully Sarah-Jane can continue to patch me back together, assuming she ever lets me out of here.

I decided to take a page from Moria Brown's book, and using the Raider Heavy armour design as a basis, I proceeded to armour my Vault-suit.

To be honest, I was extremely proud of the final product, which according the analyser function on my Pip-Boy had a DR of 15, yet a weight of 10, which I was fairly sure was much better 'protection to weight' ratio, than the game's version of an armoured Vault-suit. This was probably due to the fact that I was able to re-use Vault Security stab vest, but with the stab plates replaced with some that could provide protection from bullets.

Sadly my Vault-Tec Hard-hat was damaged beyond repair, but I managed to find combat helmet in good condition, which I suspect may have been looted from a museum, as it was blue, and had the defunct U.N. markings on the front, so it would have been unlikely to have in service prior to the war. I replace the U.N. lettering with the 106 number from my old hard-hat.

In my new colour co-ordinated outfit, I certainly looked ready for anything, except of the peals of laughter, from Sarah-Jane who had come in behind me, and caught me posing in front of the mirror. My crimson faced embarrassed reaction, which contrasted nicely with the blue of my outfit, had her rolling on the floor, while I growled at her to "Pack it in. It's not that funny".

"So I am I free to leave now" I asked sarcastically, once she had managed to pull herself together enough to given an intelligible response. "Oh, you have been free to come out since noon. Didn't you know?" she responded, while trying unsuccessfully to present a 'Little Miss Innocent' look, "The Lockdown only lasted a hour or so after you got up; after all we cannot lock up the only person who defend our home, now can we".

"Ha! Ha! Very funny." I growled, as I grabbed my guns & rucksack and walked out, while at the same time making a mental note to check to see what, if any game perks Sarah-Jane had.

But for now, I had some unfinished business up by the Vault Entrance.

* * *

I was soon crouched over my fallen foe, the 'Pied-Piper', examining its dead remains and to be honest I was surprised it that had ever been operational, because for whatever areas of expertise Dr Leris may have had, robotics was certainly not one of them.

It looked like something that had been assembled by a 5-year old, with circuit boards & wires plugged together practically at random. It was a miracle that it hadn't blow up in his face, judging at all the incorrect circuits that had either the wrong voltage/current connected, or incompatible protocol, or both.

One thing for sure, my insertion of a screw-drive had NOT improved things. The Pied-Piper was most definitely dead, although a number of its sub-systems still worked, which gave some interesting project ideas for the future.

In the meantime, I moved its remains down to one of the Maintenance workshop bays for safe-keeping.

Back at the Vault Entrance, I now searched to find how the Pied-Piper had got in here without us seeing it.

The answer, it turned out was fairly obvious, after all how many large air vents, have grills on hinges, and are opened & closed electrically. The answer should be nil, however after a helpful boost up from Sarah-Jane, I was able to pull myself into the vent, which according to the Vault plan should not exist.

Any hope of any big discovery were soon dashed, the duct only ran for a couple of metres, before stopping flush against a solid rock face. Dr Leris had clearly lashed the place up as simply a hiding/storage location for the Pied-Piper, for dumped on the floor, was Mr Handy recharging station, which had been crudely lashed into the Vault's power grid. I carefully disconnected it, and repaired the damaged wiring. If this is an example of Dr Leris technical skills, I shuddered to think what other possible damage he may have done to the Vault's systems elsewhere.

What I found really disturbing was the writing! Both sides of the duct was covered in layers & layers of writing.

On the left hand side the word "Cookie" frequently appeared, as well as literally hundreds of recipes & meal plans. 'Cookie' seemed vaguely familiar, and a quick double-check on my Pip-Boy, confirmed that one of the three Mr Handy's allocated to the Vault, had been given the ident-tag "Cookie", and had been assigned to the catering department.

On opposite side, it was the word "Eden" that was dominate, along with thousands of sayings & quotations, some of which I recognised from the game's Enclave broadcasts.

Where the two conflicting styles of text met in the middle of the ceiling, and floor, the surfaces were almost black with over-lapping, and conflicting messages.

"It figures! Schizo, or Dual Personality Disorder of some kind " I muttered, "Only in the Vault of the crazy, you would find insane robots. Leris has a lot to answer for".

With that said, I turned, walked to the exit, and dropped down to the floor below.

Five minutes later, I was stood at the door leading to the Science Section of the Vault, and where I now believed was where Dr Leris had made his lair.

It was time for a final showdown with Leris.


End file.
